
aass 61? 1 1 J 

Book-^^ 



THE GOSPEL FOR 
AN AGE OF DOUBT 




•Tl^^K-o 



THE GOSPEL FOR 
AN AGE OF DOUBT 



BY 

HENRY VAN DYKE 

D.D. (PRINCETON, HARVARD, YALE), LL.D. (UNION) 
PASTOR OF THE BRICK CHURCH IN NEW YORK 



SIXTH EDITION REVISED 
WITH A NEW PREFACE 



" But if'aTiy speaK not- con^ernln^ Jejv's Christ, 
I look upon them as tombstones and sepulchres 
of the dead, on which are iTritXn 'o-^ly the 
ftdvfes o/mvn." Z t.' ' , > v I 

St. I&NAiius, Lpist. ad Phil. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 
1902 

All rights reserved 



:^"^ 






Copyright, 1896, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped September, 1896. Reprinted December, 
1896; January, October, 1897; September, 1898; May, October, 1899, 
August, 1900 ; October, 1901 ; July, 1902. 



NorfajooH iPrfgg 

J. S. Gushing & Co. — Berwick s Smith 
Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 






"^ PEEFACE 

TO THE SIXTH EDITION 

T^yo years have passed since this book was 
first printed. A new edition is now prepared 
for popular use by leaving out the appendix 
and making the volume smaller. 

In writing a new preface, I am glad of the 
opportunity to express my sincere gratitude to 
the many friends who have given the book a 
welcome in different parts of the world, and have 
translated its message into other languages. I 
wish to acknowledge also the benefit received 
from those intelligent critics who have pointed 
out some of its faults and shortcomings, and 
to make some brief reply to those other critics 
who have misconceived its purpose and misrep- 
resented its meaning. But most of all I would 
like to say a word to make the spirit and aim 
of the book more clear, and so to bring it into 
touch with the personal life of those into whose 
hands it may fall. 

It was written in the form of a course of 
lectures on preaching, on the " Lyman Beecher 

xiii 



xiv Preface 

Foundation," and delivered before the divinity 
students of Yale University. But the aim of 
these lectures was not to teach the art of making 
sermons. It was to accentuate the truth tliat 
the question, What to preach, comes first, and the 
question, How to preach, comes afterwards. A 
man must have a distinct message, clear and 
luminous to his own soul, — a message which 
comes to him with a joyful sense of newness 
and demands utterance, — he must feel the liv- 
ing fitness of this precise message to the needs 
of the world, before he can learn to deliver 
it with freedom and power. 

The study of theology as a science is a very 
important study. The training of men in the 
art of preaching is a very valuable discipline. 
But the vital experience of faith is deeper and 
broader than the theories of theology. The 
art of preaching is worth little unless it serves 
to enrich and ennoble the larger art of living. 
Religion is the secret of this larger art of liv- 
ing. And the power of religion to inspire and 
guide men to purer, stronger, happier, more 
beautiful lives, does not depend upon the modes 
and forms in which it is preached, but simply 
upon the concrete gospel, the good news about 
God and the world, which it brings into their 
hearts. 



Preface xv 

The audience in the Yale chapel appealed to 
rae less as students of theology, than as young 
men with a life to live and a work to do in the 
modern world, in the present age. Around 
them I felt the pressure of those great, myste- 
rious forces which are silently changing the 
current of human thought and the face of 
human society. Behind them I saw the wider 
circle of the young men and women of the new 
generation, the children of this age, born into 
the turmoil and confusion, the intellectual stress 
and storm, of a period of transition. It was to 
this wider circle that I really wanted to speak, 
through the divinity students w^ho composed 
the immediate audience. I wanted to tell the 
men who were studying for the ministry that 
they must not let themselves be educated out 
of sympathy with the modern world; that they 
must understand the trials and difficulties of 
the present age in order to serve it effectively; 
that they must keep in touch with living men 
and women, outside of the circle of faith as 
well as within it, if they wished to help them. 

But more than this. I wanted to show that 
there is a message of religion especially fitted 
to meet the needs of our times. There is an 
aspect of Christianity which comes to the world 
to-day as glad tidings. There is a newness in 



xvi Preface 

the old gospel which shines out like a sunrise 
upon the darkness and despondency that over- 
shadow so much of modern life. This aspect 
of Christianity centres in the person of Jesus 
Christ, as the human life of God. This new- 
ness of the gospel lies in believing in Him as a 
real man, in whose sonship the Fatherhood of 
God is revealed and made certain to all men. 
And the power of this message to enrich and 
ennoble life lies in the fact that those who 
receive it are set free from a threefold bond- 
age : first, from the heavy thought that they 
are creatures of necessity whose actions and 
destiny are determined by heredity and en 
vironment ; second, from the haunting fear that 
the world is governed by blind chance or brute 
force ; and third, from the curse of sin, which 
is selfishness. To see Christ as the true Son of 
God and the brother of all men, is to be sure 
that the soul is free, and that God is good, and 
that the end of life is noble service. 

This is the message that I wanted to deliver 
in this book, as the true gospel for an age of 
doubt. 

The title has been misunderstood by some of 
the critics who have read it, apparently without 
going any further into the book. They have 



Preface xvii 

taken it as if it were an arraignment of the 
present age for irreligion and infidelity. They 
have resented it as if it were a confession of 
the decline of Christianity. They have found 
fault with tlie writer for a want of sympathy 
with the intellectual perplexities of the men 
and women of to-day, and a lack of insight into 
their spiritual life and moral purposes. 

It seems strange that any one should make 
such a criticism. The answer to it may be 
found in the first chapter, where I have tried 
to draAv the distinction between doubt and 
infidelity. But in order that there may be no 
room for mistake, I will say what I mean again, 
and yet more clearly. 

In calling the present "an age of doubt," I 
do not mean that it is the only age in which 
doubt has been prevalent, nor that doubt is the 
only characteristic of the age. I mean simply 
that it is one of those periods of human history 
in which the sudden expansion of knowledge 
and the breaking-up of ancient moulds of 
thought have produced a profound and wide- 
spread feeling of uncertainty in regard to the 
subject of religion. The remarkable achieve- 
ments of the critical method as applied to 
philosophy, history, and literature, have led 
men to ask whether it may not be applied in 



xviii Preface 

the same way to theology, and to take it for 
granted that the result must be destructive. 
The difficulty of adjusting the new discoveries 
of science to the established forms of theo- 
logical doctrine, has produced in some reluctant 
and irritable minds a disposition to resent all 
scientific research, and to denounce it as atheis- 
tic. But in a far greater number of minds it 
has begotten a misgiving, that if religion needs 
to defend itself by denying facts it must stand 
on a very insecure foundation. There is a 
large class of people, thoughtful, earnest, sin- 
cere, who live under the shadow of this 
misgiving. They want religion. They are 
attracted by its spiritual ideals, by its moral 
inspiration. But they hesitate to accept it, 
at least in its Christian form, for fear that 
it may not be reasonable. The questioning 
temper holds possession of their minds. Their 
attitude toward religious things is interroga- 
tive. The secular spirit insensibly gains do- 
minion over their thoughts and feelings. 
They grow Aveary of asking questions which 
seem to find no answer. The influence of the 
great mass of popular literature in ^^hich 
religion is practically ignored, tends to foster 
the impression that it is a subject in regard to 
which certainty is neither necessary nor attain- 



Preface xix 

able. The existence of God, tlie reality of 
the soul, the prospect of immortality, — these 
appear like insoluble problems to many of the 
children of this age. They are troubled and 
depressed and impoverished by the want of 
faith, but they accept indecision as the only 
rational attitude, and try to do the best that 
they can without believing in 

" The truths that never can be proved." 

This is what I mean by an age of doubt. 
Who that knows the young men and women of 
to-day, can deny that multitudes of the very 
best of them are feeling the influence of this 
kind of doubt, and suffering under it? Who 
can fail to see that in many ways this kind of 
doubt is an evidence of spiritual sincerity, of 
moral earnestness, of a desire to be true to the 
truth at all costs ? Who can forget that the 
sadness, the despondency, the pessimism of 
many of those who have surrendered faith at 
the call of what they conceived to be an intel- 
lectual duty, is in itself a proof that religion is 
necessary to complete human life and make the 
world endurable ? 

This is a doubting age. But it is not there- 
fore an age to be despised or despaired of. It 
is a hopeful age, an earnest age, an age of gen- 



XX Preface 

erous feeling and noble action. What it needs 
is a clear answer to its doubt, and a powerful 
remedy for its sadness. This answer and this 
remedy are found in the person of Jesus Christ. 
His life is a fact which cannot be explained 
without God. His character is a standing 
proof of the reality of the spiritual world. A 
universe of matter and force could never have 
produced such a person. His teaching is a 
direct witness to things which are unseen and 
eternal. Those who will receive it shall find 
His words a fountain of living waters springing 
up within them unto everlasting life. 

It is not to be supposed that any one can write 
or speak so as to make everybody perceive and 
accept this truth. All human preaching comes 
far short of the fulness of the gospel. Even 
while Christ was on earth there were many who 
doubted, and held fast to their doubts. But I 
am sure that the most helpful, the most con- 
vincing message for a doubtful age is that 
which centres in His person, and seeks to make 
Him evident as the final and immutable revela- 
tion of God. 

That is what this book tries to do. It is in 
fact nothing more than an endeavour to prove 
these two things: Christ is a real person; 
Christ is God manifest in the flesh. 



Preface xxi 

But it differs from other arguments for the 
Divinity of Christ in at least one point. It 
accepts without reserve or qualification the per- 
fect humanity of Christ. The chaj^ter in which 
this view of the person of Jesus is expressed 
has been criticised as dangerous. I cannot 
alter it, because it represents my most profound 
convictions. To me it seems not dangerous, 
but safe, — far more safe, indeed, than any 
other view, because it corresponds more closely 
with the facts. The life which Christ lived on 
earth was a veritable human life. The person 
who lived it was the Son of God. But in order 
to live that human life He had to become man, 
not in a dramatic sense, but actually and en- 
tirely. There were not two wills and two 
minds working within the person of Jesus. 
The mind that was in Christ was a single mind, 
and His will was the expression of an undi- 
vided personality. He was subject to igno- 
rance, to limitation, to weakness, to temptation, 
even as we are. The only point of difference 
between Him and us is that we sin, but He 
sinned not. The Godhood that was in Him 
was such as manhood is capable of receiving. 
There is no evidence in His life or in His 
character of the omniscience and omnipresence 
and omnipotence that would have separated 



xxii Preface 

Him from us. His existence among men was 
simply the human life of God. 

It seems to me that this is the view of Christ 
which is given in the New Testament. I have 
tried to express it clearly, because it opens the 
way to the dissolving of many doubts, and 
makes His Divinity at once easier to be be- 
lieved, in and more precious in its significance. 
And if it does this for one reader who has 
been troubled by unbelief in the Divinity of 
Christ, if it shows one seeker after God how to 
find Him in the man Christ Jesus, the chief 
purpose of the book will be accomplished. 

The same considerations and desires have 
controlled my treatment of the doctrines of fore- 
ordination, sovereignty, and election. There 
has been no intention to enter into theological 
controversy. Indeed, if I had intended to do 
this, the report of the critics upon the result 
would fill me with curious confusion. For 
they seem to be unable to decide upon which 
side of the controversy the book is to be 
reckoned. One of them calls it " a violent and 
unfair attack upon Calvinism " ; another says 
that "it presents the doctrines of the West- 
minster Confession so winningly that they are 
accepted almost before they are recognized." 



Preface xxiii 

The compliment and the reproach are alike 
undeserved. In point of fact I was not think- 
ing at all of Calvinism or of the Westminster 
Confession, but only of the New Testament, 
and of how directly it meets the wants of our 
age with the liberating teachings of Christ. 
Nothing has been more effective in begetting 
and increasing doubts than the idea that 
Christian doctrine required us to believe that 
all events, good and evil, were foreordained by 
God, and that some men were eternally chosen 
to be saved, without regard to their faith or 
works, while all the rest were left to inevitable 
destruction. There is no trace of such an idea 
in the mind of Christ. On the contrary. He is 
the great liberator of men from the bondage of 
fatalism, and His invitation to all the weary 
and heavy-laden to come unto Him is a divine 
assurance that whosoever will may have ever- 
lasting life. 

After years of doubt and inward conflict I 
have arrived at great peace and comfort in the 
unreserved acceptance of these teachings of 
Jesus. I do not believe that all things that 
happen are determined beforehand. The soul 
is free. The evil that men do is all their own; 
God has not foreordained it. His only pre- 
destination is to good, and if men will accept 



xxiv Preface 

their divine destiny, God will help them to fulfil 
it. Election is not the arbitrary choice of a 
few to receive blessings from which the many 
are excluded. It is the selection of certain 
races and men to receive great privileges to fit 
them for the service of all mankind in the 
divine kingdom. This is my faith in regard to 
these questions. I have made no secret of it. 
The recent agitation concerning ministerial 
honour in creed subscription seemed to require 
that it should be frankly confessed. If such a 
faith were inconsistent with any ecclesiastical 
obligations, I should be prompt to renounce 
them. But it is evident that there is no incon- 
sistency. A man may hold this faith and 
preach it, as a loyal Christian, in the fellow- 
ship of the Presbyterian Church. 

It remains only to add a word of explanation 
in regard to a criticism of this book which goes 
deeper than any of those of which I have 
spoken. A writer, for whose opinion I have 
great respect, has said that the volume does 
not give due place and proportion to the truth 
of the Atonement ; that it fails to set forth 
Christ as "the Lamb of God which taketh 
away the sin of the world." 

If this were altogether true, I should be very 



Preface xxv 

sorry. 1 certainly believe tliat Christ is the 
only Saviour of sinners ; that He died to re- 
deem men from the curse of sin, and that the 
attraction of His cross is most potent upon the 
human heart. I have tried to say this very 
distinctly in the second chapter and at the 
close of the fourth chapter. 

But that the criticism is partly true I must 
admit. The Atonement does not appear in its 
due place and proportion in this book. It 
would not have been possible without pro- 
longing the volume to a much greater length 
and turning aside from the purpose for which 
it was written. It was not intended to be a 
complete statement of Christian truth. It was 
meant only to present that aspect of the gospel 
which seemed to be especially adapted to the 
wants of an age of doubt. I was thinking of 
the men and women whose minds are confused 
and troubled by modern speculations, who are 
oppressed by the intellectual difficulties of 
belief, who feel the benumbing influence of the 
secular spirit, and who stand sadly in doubt in 
regard to the reality of the whole spiritual life. 
I wanted to say something to help them, some- 
thing to make it easier for them to believe in 
Christ, and, through Christ, in God. 

I know very well that it is not enough for 



xxvi Preface 

men to be delivered from doubt. They need 
also to be saved from sin. But before this can 
have any meaning to them they must begin to 
believe in a Divine Being and in their own 
spiritual relationship to Him. What does sin 
mean to a man who doubts whether there is a 
personal God, and thinks that his soul may be 
only a name for a certain secretion of the gray 
matter in his brain, and has no sure expectation 
of a life beyond death ? What he needs first 
of all is a gospel which will bring him news of 
a real spiritual world, a gospel whose simplicity 
and directness and personal force will make the 
first adventure of faith possible. It was of 
such men as this that I was thinking, when 
this book was written. 

I know very well that the book is incom- 
plete. It touches only one aspect of the great- 
est of all subjects. It needs a sequel, to make 
it harmonize more fully with the truth as it 
is in Jesus, and to bring it into touch with 
another side of the need of humanity. Very 
soon, I hope to be permitted to follow this 
volume on " The Gospel for an Age of Doubt," 
with another, on " The Gospel for a World of 
Sin." 

"Thule," York Harbour, 
July 10th, 1898. 



CONTENTS 

I. An Age of Doubt 1 

n. The Gospel of a Person ... 41 

III. The Unveiling of the Father . . 81 

IV. The Human Life of God . . . 123 
V. The Source of Authority . . . 167 

VI. Liberty 203 

VII. Sovereignty 245 

Vni. Service 281 

Index 319 



AN AGE OF DOUBT 



" Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt, 
And cling to Faith beyond the forms of Faith ! 
She reels not in the storm of warring words, 
She brightens at the clash of * Yes ' and ' No,' 
She sees the Best that glimmers thro' the Worst, 
She feels the Sun is hid but for a night, 
She spies the summer thro' the winter bud, 
She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls. 
She hears the lark within the songless egg, 
She finds the fountain where they wail'd ' Mirage ' ! '* 

— Tennyson, The Ancient Sage 



AN AGE OF DOUBT 

There is one point in which all men resem- The person- 

ble each other : it is that they are all different. «^ ^^''«'^"^'^ 

•^ ^ of the age. 

But their differences are not fixed and immuta- 
ble. They are variable and progressive. Types 
of character survive or perish, like the forms 
of animal life. Some predominate ; others are 
subordinated. 

Thus it comes to pass that underneath all 
the diversities of individual life, we may dis- 
cern, not with the clearness of a portrait, but 
with the vague outlines of a composite photo- 
graph, the features of a Zeitgeist^ a spirit of 
the time. Generations differ almost as much 
as the men who compose them. There is a 
personal equation in every age. 

To know this is a necessity for the preacher. 
Even as the physician must apprehend the idio- 
syncrasy of his patient, and the teacher must 
recognize the quality of his pupil, so must the 
preacher be in touch with his age. 

3 



4 An Age of Bouht 

Literature j^ endeavouring to arrive at this knowledge^ 

as CLTi 'i)ZCl€'X 

of life. contact with the world is of the first conse- 

quence. For one who desires to make men and 
women what they ought to be, nothing can 
take the place of an acquaintance with men 
and women as they are. It seems to me that 
one of the best means of obtaining this ac- 
quaintance is through literature, — not that 
highly specialized and more or less technical 
variety of literature which is produced ex- 
pressly for certain classes of readers, but liter- 
ature in the broader sense, as it appeals to 
cultivated and intelligent people in general, 
including contemporary history and criticism 
poetry and fiction, popular philosophy and di 
luted science. This kind of literature is the 
efflorescence of the Zeitgeist. It is at once a 
product, and a cause, of the temperament of 
the age. In it we see not only what certain 
men have written by way of comment on the 
movement of the times, but also what a great 
many men are reading while they move. It 
expresses, and it creates, a spirit, an attitude 
of mind. " I do not imagine," says a keen 
observer, " that I am announcing an altogether 
novel truth in affirming that literature is one of 
the elements of the ethical life, — the most im- 
portant perhaps ; for in the decline, more and 



An Age of Doubt 5 

more evident, of traditional and local influences, 
the book is taking its place as the great ini- 
tiator." i 

For this reason I believe that a course in The value 
modern novels and poetry might well be made ^^^-l^^'^ 
a part of every scheme of preparation for the 
ministry. The preacher who does not know 
what his people are reading does not know his 
people. He will miss tlie significance of the 
current talk of society, and even of the daily 
comments of the newspapers, which are in fact 
only a cheap substitute for conversation, unless 
he has the key to it in the tone of popular 
literature. It is from this source that I have 
draAvn many of the illustrations for this lecture. 
if they appear unfamiliar or out of place in a 
theological seminary, I can only say that they 
seem to me none the less, but perhaps the more, 
significant and valuable on that account. For 
I think that one of the causes by which, as 
John Foster wrote seventy years ago, " Evan- 
gelical Religion has been rendered unaccepta- 
ble to persons of cultivated taste," ^ has been 
a certain ill-disguised contempt on the part of 

1 Paul Bourget, Essais de Psychologie Contemporaine, 
Paris, 1895. 

2 John Foster, Essays, " On the Aversion of Men of Taste 
to Evangelical Religion," p. 188. 



6 An Age of Doubt 

persons of orthodox opinions for what they 
are pleased to call, "mere belles-lettres.'' And 
though I do not fancy that there is any sym- 
pathy with that frame of mind in this place, 
yet the occasion seems opportune for saying 
in a definite way that the preacher who wishes 
to speak to this age must read many books in 
order that he may be in a position to make the 
best use of what Sir Walter Scott called " the 
one Book." He must keep himself in touch 
with modern life by studying modern litera- 
ture, which is one of its essential factors. 



A doubting As soon as we step out of the theological cir- 
cle into the broad field of general reading we 
see that we are living in an age of doubt. 

I do not mean to say that this is the only 
feature in the physiognomy of the age. It 
has many other aspects, from any one of which 
we might pick a name. From the material 
side, we might call it an age of progress ; 
from the intellectual side, an age of science ; 
from the medical side, an age of hysteria ; from 
the political side, an age of democracy; from 
the commercial side, an age of advertisement ; 
from the social side, an age of publicomania. 



An Age of Doubt 7 

But looking at it from the sj)iritual side, which 
is the preacher's point of view, and considering 
that interior life to which every proclamation 
of a gospel must be addressed, beyond a doubt 
it stands confessed as a doubting age. 

There is a profound and wide-spread un- The ques- 
settlement of soul in reerard to fundamental ^^/"/^ 
truths of religion, and also in regard to the 
nature and existence of the so-called spiritual 
faculties by which alone these truths can be 
perceived. In its popular manifestations, this 
unsettlement takes the form of uncertainty 
rather than of denial, of unbelief rather than 
of disbelief, of general scepticism rather than 
of specific infidelity. The questioning spirit- 
is abroad, moving on the face of the waters, 
seeking rest and finding none. 

It is not merely that particular doctrines, 
such as the inspiration of the Bible, or the 
future punishment of the wicked, are attacked 
and denied. The preacher who concentrates 
his attention at these points will fail to realize 
the gravity of the situation. It is not that a 
spirit of bitter and mocking atheism, such as 
Bishop Butler described at the close of the 
last century, has led people of discernment 
to set up religion "as a principal subject of 



8 An Age of Doubt 

mirth and ridicule, as it were by way of rC' 
prisal for its having so long interrupted the 
pleasures of the world." ^ The preacher who 
takes that view of the case now will be at 
least fifty years too late. He will fail to 
understand the serious and pathetic temper of 
the age. 
Respectful The questioning spirit of to-day is severe 

but not bitter, restless but not frivolous ; it 
takes itself very seriously and applies its meth- 
ods of criticism, of analysis, of dissolution, 
with a sad courtesy of demeanour, to the deep- 
est and most vital truths of religion, the being 
of God, the reality of the soul, the possibility 
of a future life. Everywhere it comes and 
everywhere it asks for a reason, in the shape 
of a positive and scientific demonstration. 
When one is given, it asks for another, and 
when another is given, it asks for the reason 
of the reason. The laws of evidence, the prin- 
ciples of judgment, the witness of history, the 
testimony of consciousness, — all are called in 
question. The answers which have been given 
by religion to the most difficult and pressing 
problems of man's inner life are declared to 
be unsatisfactory and without foundation. The 

^ Joseph Butler, The Analogy of Bdigion (London, Bell 
& Daldy, 1858). " Advertisement," p. xxit. 



An Age of Doubt 9 

question remains unsolved. Is it insoluble? 
The age stands in doubt. Its coat-of-arms is 
an interrogation point rampant, above three 
bishops dormant, and its motto is Query? 



n 

If we inquire the cause of this general seep- Causes of 

... . , , T . ,1 scepticism. 

ticism in regard to religion, the common answer 
from all sides would probably attribute it to 
the progress of science. I do not feel satisfied 
with this answer. At least I should wish to 
qualify it in such a way as to give it a very 
different meaning from that which is implied in 
the current phrase " the conflict between science 
and religion." 

Science, in itself considered, the orderly and Science not 

11 T , c ,^ ^ 1 • hostile to 

reasoned knowledge oi the phenomenal universe religion. 
of things and events, ought not to be, and has 
not been, hostile to religion, simply because it 
does not, and cannot, enter into the same sphere. 
The great advance which has been made in the 
observation and classification of sensible facts, 
and in the induction of so-called general laws 
under which those facts may be arranged for pur- 
poses of study, has not even touched the two 
questions upon the answer to which the reality 
and nature of religion depend : first, the pos- 



10 An Age of Doubt 

sible existence of other facts which physical 
science cannot observe and classify ; and sec- 
ond, the probable explanation of these facts. 
The task of What has happened is just this. The field in 
changed,hut which faith has to work has been altered, and 
enlarged. it sccms to me enormously broadened. But 
the work remains the same. The question is 
whether faith has enough vital energy to face 
and accomplish it. For example, the material 
out of which to construct an argument from 
the evidences of final cause in nature has been 
incalculably increased by the discoveries of the 
last fifty years in regard to natural selection 
and the origin of species. The observant wan- 
derer in the field of nature to-day no longer 
stumbles upon Dr. Paley's old-fashioned, open- 
faced, turnip-shaped watch lying on the ground. 
He finds, instead, an intricate and self-adjusting 
chronometer, capable not only of marking time 
with accuracy, but also of evolving by its own 
operation another more perfect and delicate 
instrument, with qualities and powers which 
adapt themselves to their surroundings and so 
advance forever. The idea of final cause has 
not been touched. Only the region which it 
must illuminate has been vastly enlarged. It 
remains to be seen whether faith can supply 
' the illuminating power. Already we have the 



An Age of Doubt 11 

promise of an answer in many books, by mas- 
ters of science and philosophy, who show that 
the theory of evolntion demands for its com- 
pletion the recognition of the spiritual nature 
of man and the belief in an intelligent and per- 
sonal God. 

The spread of scepticism is often attributed ^^« ezpav. 
to the growth of our conception oi the physical knowledge. 
magnitude of the universe. The bewildering 
numbers and distances of the stars, the gigan- 
tic masses of matter in motion, and the tremen- 
dous sweep of the forces which drive our tiny 
earth along like a grain of dust in an orderly 
w^hirlwind, are supposed to have overwhelmed 
and stunned the power of spiritual belief in 
man. The account seems to me incorrect and 
unconvincing. I observe that precisely the 
same argument was used by Job and Isaiah 
and the Psalmists to lead to a conclusion of 
faith. The striliing disproportion between 
the littleness of man and the greatness of the 
stars was to them a demonstration of the ne- 
cessity of religion to solve the equation. They 
saw in the heavens the glory of God. And if 
man to-day knows vastly more of the heavens, 
does not that put him in position to receive a 
larger and loftier vision of the glory ? 



12 



An Age of Doubt 



Devout men 
of pure sci- 
ence. 



The ai^o- 
gance of 
science 
falsely so- 
called. 



We observe, moreover, that it is just in those 
departments of science where the knowledge of 
the magnitude and splendid order of the physi- 
cal universe is most clear and exact, namely, in 
astronomy and mathematics, that we find the 
most illustrious men of science who have not 
been sceptics but sincere and steadfast believ- 
ers in the Christian religion. Kepler and 
Newton were men of faith. The most brill- 
iant galaxy of mathematicians ever assembled 
at one time and place was at the University of 
Cambridge in the latter half of this century. 
Of these " Sir W. Thomson, Sir George Stokes, 
Professors Tait, Adams, Clerk-Maxwell, and 
Cayley — not to mention a number of lesser 
lights, such as Routh, Todhunter, Ferrers, etc. 
— were all avowed Christians."^ Surely it 
needs no further proof to show tliat the pur- 
suit of pure science does not necessarily tend 
to scepticism. 

No, we must look more closely and distin- 
guish more clearly in order to discover in the 
scientific activities of the age a cause of the 
prevailing doubt. And if we do this I think 
we shall find it in the fallacy of that kind of 
science which mistakes itself for omniscience. 



1 George John Romanes, M.A., LL.D., F.R.S,, Thoughts 
on Beligion (Chicago, 1895), p. 147. 



An Age of Doubt 18 

" What we see is the pretence of certain sci- 
ences to represent in themselves all human 
knowledge. And as outside of knowledge 
there is no longer, in the eyes of science thus 
cui'tailed, any means for man to come in con- 
tact with the realities, we see the pretence 
advanced by some that all reality and all life 
should be reduced to that which they have ver- 
ified. Outside of this there are only dreams 
and illusions. This is indeed too much. It is 
no longer science, but scientific absolutism."^ 

"The history of the natural sciences," said 
Du Bois-Reymond in 1877, "is the veritable 
history of mankind." "The world," says an- 
other, " is made of atoms and ether, and there 
is no room for ghosts." M. Berthelot in the 
preface to his Origines de Valchimie^ modestly 
claims that " the world to-day is without mys- 
teries " ; meaning thereby, I suppose, that 
there is nothing in existence, from the crys- 
tallization of a diamond to the character of a 
saint, which cannot be investigated and ex- 
plained by means of a crucible, a blow-pipe, a 
microscope, and a few other tools. 

This is simply begging the question of a Animmense 
spiritual world in the negative. It is an im- «««^<^P^*on. 

1 Charles "Wagner, Youths translated from the French by 
Ernest Redwood (New York, 1893), p. 28. 



14 An Age of Doubt 

mense and stupefying assumption. It is a 
claim to solve the j)roblems of the inner life 
by suppressing them. This claim is not in any 
sense necessary to the existence of science, nor 
to any degree supported by the work which 
it has actually accomplished. But it is made 
with a calm assurance which imposes power- 
fully upon the popular mind ; and, being made 
in the name of science, it carries with it an 
appearance of authority borrowed from the 
great service which science has rendered to 
humanity by its discoveries in the sphere Ol 
the visible. 
Results of The result of this petitio principii in the 

tiln^^^^^^' i^i^^s of those who accept it fully and carry 
it out to its logical conclusion, is a definite 
system of metaphysical negation which goes 
under the various names of Naturalism, Posi- 
tivism, Empiricism, and Agnosticism. Its re- 
sult in the minds of those who accept it 
partially and provisionally, but lack the abil- 
ity or the inclination to formulate it, is the 
development of a sceptical temper. Its result 
in the minds of those who are unconsciously 
affected by it, through those profound instincts 
of sympathy and involuntary imitation which 
influence all men, is an attitude, — more or 
less sincere, more or less consistent and con- 



tion 



An Age of Doubt 15 

tinuous, — an attitude of doubt. The spirit 
of the age tacitly divides all the various 
beliefs which are held among men into two 
classes. Those which are supported by sci- 
entific proof must be accepted. Those which 
are not thus supported either must be re- 
jected, or may safely and properly be disre- 
garded as matters of no consequence. 



m 

Now this general scepticism, in all its The mirror 
shades and degrees, from the most clear, self- %^(^^^jIq^^^^ 
conscious, and aggressive, to the most vague, shadow of 
diffused, and deprecatory, is reflected in the 
productions of current literature. Never was 
literary art more perfect, more accomplished, 
more versatile and successful than in the pres- 
ent age. Never have its laws been more widely 
understood and its fascinations more potently 
exercised. Never has it evoked more magical 
and charming forms to float above an abyss 
of disenchantment and nothingness. 

In the lay sermons and essays of Huxley 
and Tyndall and Frederic Harrison and W. K. 
Clifford, scepticism appears militant and trench- 
ant. These knights-errant of Doubting Castle 
are brilliantly equipped as men of war ; and 



16 An Age of Doubt 

even when they fall foul of each other, as they 
often do, the ground of the conflict is an accu- 
sation of infidelity to the principles of unbelief, 
and its object is to drive the adversary back 
into a more complete and consistent negation. 

Over the fragmentary but majestic life- 
philosophies of Carlyle and Emerson, lying 
in the disarray of stones hewn for a temple 
yet unbuilt, imaginative scepticism hangs like 
a cloud. Over Carlyle, it is the shadow of 
a noonday tempest, full of darkness and tu- 
mult and muttering thunder. Over Emerson, 
it floats like a cumulus of evening vapours, 
luminous and beautiful, alluringly transfigured 

" In the golden lightning 
Of the sunken sun." ^ 

In the vivid and picturesque historical 
studies of Renan and Froude, scepticism is 
at once ironical and idealistic, destructive and 
dogmatic. In the penetrative and intelligent 
critiques of Scherer and Morley, it adlieres 
with proud but illogical persistence to the 
ethical consequences of the faith with which 
logic has broken : like a son disinherited, but 
resolved to maintain the right of possession 
by the strong arm. 

1 Shelley, " Ode to a Skylark." 



Ayi Age of Doubt 17 

In the novels of unflinching and unblushing Fiction 
naturalism, — like those of Zola and Maupassant ^ ^^"^y* 
and the later works of Thomas Hardy, scepticism 
speaks with a harsh and menacing accent of the 
emptiness of all life and the futility of all 
endeavour. In the psychological romances of 
Flaubert and Bourget and Spielhagen, George 
Eliot and Mrs. Humphry Ward, it holds the 
mirror up to human nature to disclose a face 
darkened with inconsolable regret for lost 
dreams. Far apart as Madame Bovary and 
Cosmopolis^ Prohlematische Naturen and Middle- 
march and Rohei^t Elsmere may be in many of 
their features, do they not wear the same ex- 
pression, — the cureless melancholy of disil- 
lusion ? 

Fiction in its more superficial form, dealing 
only with the manners and customs of the so- 
cial drama, and relying for its interest mainly 
upon local colour and the charm of incident 
narrated with vivacity and grace, betrays its 
scepticism by a serene, unconscious disregard 
of the part which religion plays in real life. 
In how many of the lighter novels of the day 
do we find any recognition, even between the 
lines, of the influence which the idea of God or 
its absence, the practice of prayer or its neg- 



18 An Age of Doubt 

lect, actually exercise upon the character and 
conduct of men ? Take, for example, Trilby ^^ as 
the type of a clever book carelessly written for 
the thoughtless public of a passing moment. It 
is incredibly credulous in regard to the dramatic 
possibilities of hypnotism. It is pitifully in- 
adequate in its conception of the actual poten- 
cies of religion ; and it uses Christianity chiefly 
as a subject for caricature in the style of the 
illustrated newspapers, which are called comic. 
Poetry de- Poetry has always been the most direct and 

spon en . intimate utterance of the human heart. And 
it is in poetry that we hear to-day the voice 
of scepticism most clearly, "making abundant 
music around an elementary nihilism, now 
stripped naked." ^ Listen to its sonorous chant- 
ings as they come from France in the verse of 
Leconte de Lisle, celebrating the sombre ritual 
of human automata before the altar of the un- 
known and almighty tyrant, who agitates them 
endlessly for his own amusement. Listen to 
its delicate and decadent lyrics, as Charles 
Baudelaire sings his defeat in life and his 
thirst for annihilation. 

" Morne esprit, autrefois amoureux de la lutte, 
L'Espoir dont I'eperon attisait ton ardeur 

i George Du Maurier, Trilby (Harpers, 1895). 

2 Paul Desjardins, Le Devoir Present (Paris, 1892), p. 65. 



An Age of Doiiht 19 

Ne veut plus t'enfoiircher. Couche toi sans pudeur, 
Vieux cheval dont le pied k chaque obstacle butte. 

Resigne-toi, mon coeur, dors ton sommeil de brute. 

Et le Temps m'engloutit minute par minute 
Comme la neige immense un corps pris de roideur : 
Je contemple d'en haut le globe en sa rondeur 
Et je n'y cherclie plus I'abri d'une cahute ! 

Avalanche, veux tu m'emporter dans ta chute?" ^ 

Turn to England and hear its musical con- 
fession in the cool, sad, melodious tones of 
Matthew Arnold, no enemy of faith, but her 
disenchanted lover. 

" Forgive me, masters of the mind, 
At whose behest I long ago 
So much unlearned, so much resigned — 
I come not here to be your foe ; 
I seek these anchorites not in ruth, 
To curse and to deny your truth ; 

Not as their friend, or child, I speak 

But as on some far northern strand, 

Thinking of his own gods, a Greek, 

In pity and mournful awe might stand 

Before a fallen Eunic stone, — 

For both were faiths, and both are gone." * 

There is a poem by Tennyson (who never 
broke with faith, though he felt the strain of 

1 Charles Baudelaire, Fleurs du Mai (Paris, 1888), p. 205. 
*♦ Le gout du N^ant." 

2 Matthew Arnold, Poems (New York, Macmillan, 1878), 
p. 337. " Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse." 



20 



An Age of Doubt 



doubt), in which he describes with intense 

dramatic sympathy the finality of scepticism 

in the human soul. It is called "Despair." 

A picture of There is another poem, called *'Sea Dreams," 

the sea of , i-ii . .. «i.. 

doubt. m which he gives a vision of the rising tide of 

doubt as it threatens to undermine and over- 
whelm the beliefs of the past. The woman is 
telling her husband the dream which came to 
her in the night as she watched by their sick 
child. 

" But round the North, a light, 
A belt, it seem'd, of luminous vapour, lay, 
And ever in it a low musical note 
Swell'd up and died ; and, as it swell'd, a ridge 
Of breaker issued from the belt, and still 
Grew with the growing note, and when the note 
Had reach'd a thunderous fulness, on those cliffs 
Broke, mixt with awful light (the same as that 
Living within the belt) whereby she saw 
That all those lines of cliffs were cliffs no more, 
But huge cathedral fronts of every age, 
Grave, florid, stern, as far as eye could see, 
One after one : and then the great ridge drew, 
Lessening to the lessening music, back. 
And passed into the belt and swell'd again 
Slowly to music : ever when it broke 
The statues, king, or saint, or founder, fell ; 
Then from the gaps and chasms of ruin left 
Came men and women in dark clusters round, 
Some crying, ' Set them up! they shall not fall!* 
And others, ' Let them lie, for they have fall'n.* 
And still they strove and wrangled: . . . 
. . . and ever as their shrieks 



An Age of Doubt 21 

Ran highest up the gamut, that great wave 
Returnhig, while none mark'd it, on the crowd 
Broke, mixt with awful light, and show'd their eyes 
Glaring, and passionate looks, and swept away 
The men of flesh and blood, and men of stone, 
To the waste deeps together." i 

It was but a dream, dispelled from the mind The pity oj 
of her to whom it came in the night-watches *^* 
by the crying of her little child, and soon for- 
gotten in the sweet reality of human love. 
Only a dream, but how many souls have felt 
the vague sadness, the haunting, helpless pity 
and fear of a like vision, looking out upon the 
landscape of man's inner life, and seeing the 
ancient landmarks slowly melted or swiftly 
swept away, the shrines of memory shaken 
and removed, the fair images of immortal de- 
sire and aspiration dissolving and disappearing 
in the onward waves, silently creeping, or surg- 
ing with mysterious and inarticulate music out 
of the waste deep of doubt, — 

" The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea." 2 

Who can think of the sharp anguish and dull 
grief that have fallen upon innumerable hearts 
through the loss of their most precious faiths ; 

i Tennyson's Poetical Works (Macmillan, 1890), p. 138. 
2 Matthew Arnold, "To Marguerite." Foems (Macmil- 
lan, 1878), p. 184. 



22 An Age of Doubt 

who can think of the graj^, formless, ever-mov- 
ing, yet immovable flood of mordant gloom that 
has covered so many once bright and fertile 
fields of human hope and endeavour, so many 
once secure and peaceful homes of human trust 
and confidence, — who can think of these things, 
even though his own standpoint be still un- 
touched, his own faith-dwelling founded upon 
an untrembling rock far above the tide, with- 
out a sorrowful perturbation of spirit and a 
deep, inward sense of compassionate distress 
and dread ? We stand upon the shore, but we 
stand beside the sea. And we look out upon 
it, as Emile Littre sadly wrote,i like the women 
of Troy, whom the Roman poet pictured gaz- 
ing at its mighty currents and engulfing waves ; 

*^Pontum adspectabant Jlentes.'* 



IV 

Sympathy It is with no careless and exaggerating hand, 

with doubt. • J • • xi J.' 1 J • • -J. 

it IS m no unsympathetic and condemning spirit, 
that I have tried to draw this picture of the 
sceptical age in which we live. Its faults, its 
perils, are mine and yours. The preacher who 
assumes a supercilious and damnatory attitude 

1 ifcmile Littr^, Conservation, Bevolution^ Positivisme, 
Itemarques, p. 430. 



An Age of Doubt 23 

towards the doubts of the present time can do 
little to relieve, and may do much to increase 
them. If we desire to be true ministers to a 
doubting age, we must put ourselves in the posi- 
tion of Maurice, who said, " I wish to confess 
the sins of the time as my own." ^ So far as ' 
current scepticism has its source in evil, it flows 
from faults of which we all partake, — the pride 
of intellect, the haste of judgment, the prefer- 
ence of the seen to the unseen, the impatience 
of ignorance, the vain demand of perfection in 
the finite comprehension of the infinite, and the 
disloyalty of reason to conscience. 

But indeed this is not the point of view from Lessons of 

which we speak. This lecture is not an indict- ^^^'^'^'^^^e- 
^ ^ _ ment. 

ment. It is a diagnosis. Doubt, as we are 
thinking of it, is not a crime, but a malady. 
And if we are to have any hope or power of 
staying its progress and healing its ravages, we 
must not only be sympathetic in our understand- 
ing of it, but we must also look through it, 
earnestly and patiently, to see whether there 
are not some favourable symptoms, some signs 
of enduring vitality, some promises of returning 
health and strength in the spirit of the age. 
Of these it seems to me that there are three, 

1 The Life of Frederick Denison Maurice (New York, 
Scribners, 1884), vol. ii., p. 235. 



24 



An Age of Doubt 



Pessimism. 



Cheerful 
scepticism 
almost ex- 
tinct. 



SO evident and so important, that we ought not 
'to overlook them. First, the acknowledged 
discontent and pain of unbelief ; second, the 
practical recoil of some of the finest minds 
from the void of absolute scepticism ; third, 
the persistent desire of many doubting spirits 
to serve mankind by love, self-sacrifice, and 
ethical endeavour. In other words, I would 
read the lesson of encouragement in the suffer- 
ings of doubt, in the doubts of doubt, and in 
the splendid moral inconsistencies of doubt. 

Begin, then, with pain, which is not only a 
warning of disease, but also a sign of life. The 
pessimism which goes hand in hand with scep- 
ticism in this nineteenth century is a cry of 
suffering. The closely reasoned philosophies of 
Schopenhauer and Hartmann, with their prem- 
isses of misery and conclusions of despair, are 
only the scientific statement of a widely diffused 
sentiment of dissatisfaction and despondency in 
regard to life.^ Their spread, like that of some 
apparently new disease, is due to the fact that 
they give a name to something from which men 
have long suffered. 

It seemed at one time as if the course of 
modern scepticism was to be free from sadness, 
a painless malady. At the beginning of the 
1 James Sully, Pessimism, pp. 2, 3. 



An Age of Doubt 25 

century the tone of infidelity was jubilant and 
triumphant. Percy Bysshe Shelley walked into"* 
the inn at Montanvert and wrote his name in 
the visitors' book, adding " democrat, philan- 
thropist, atheist," — as if it were a record of 
victory and a title of glory. This cheerful 
type of scepticism still survives, here and there, 
in a few men who insist that the process of dis- 
enchantment is pleasant and joyous, and that 
the optimism which belonged to faith may re- 
main while the faith itself disappears. It is " 
like the smile of the famous cat, in the child's 
story-book, which broadened and brightened 
while the cat faded, until finally the animal was 
gone and nothing but the grin was left. 

But for the most part modern doubt shows a The sorrow 
sad and pain-drawn face, heavy with grief and /^-.t*"*^ 
dark with apprehension. There is an illustra- 
tion of this change in the life of George Eliot. 
In her girlhood she passed suddenly, by an un- 
conditional surrender, out of a warm faith in 
Evangelical Christianity into the coldest kind 
of rational scepticism. She writes of the dull, 
and now forgotten, book which wrought this 
change, Charles Hennell's Inquire/ concerning 
the Origin of Christianity^ with strange and al- 
most fantastic merriment: "Mr. Hennell ought 
to be one of the happiest of men that he has 



26 An Age of Doubt 

done such a life's work. I am sure if I had 
written such a book I should be invulnerable 
to all the arrows of all the gods and goddesses. 
The book is full of wit to me. It gives me that 
exquisite kind of laughter which comes from 
the gratification of the reasoning faculties."^ 
But the arrows which she despised struck 
home, ere life was ended, to her own heart. 

" I remember," writes Mr. F. W. H. Myers, 
"how at Cambridge I walked with her once 
in the Fellows' Garden of Trinity, on an even- 
ing of rainy May, and she, stirred somewhat 
beyond her wont, and taking as her text 
the three words which have been used so 
often as the inspiring trumpet-calls of men, 
— the words God, Immortality, Duty, — pro- 
nounced, with terrible earnestness, how in- 
conceivable was the first, how unbelievable 
was the second, and how peremptory and abso- 
lute the third. Never, perhaps, had sterner 
accents afBrmed the sovereignty of imper- 
sonal and unrecompensing law. I listened and 
night fell ; her grave, majestic countenance 
turned towards me like a Sibyl's in the gloom ; 
it was as though she withdrew from my grasp, 
one by one, the two scrolls of promise, and 

^ George ElioVs Life, as related in her Letters (New York, 
Harpers), vol. i., p. 119. 



An Age of Doubt 27 

left me the third scroll only, awful with in- 
evitable fate."^ 

An inevitable fate, seen through the gloom The sad as- 
of falling night, — that indeed is the aspect of 
life which the literature of doubt displays to 
us. A gray shadow of melancholy spreads 
over the questioning, uncertain, disillusioned 
age ; languid sighs of weariness breathe from 
its salons and palaces. Bitter discontent mut- 
ters in its workshops and tenements. "Never, 
I believe," says Paul Desjardins, "have men 
been more universally sad than in the present 
time." And then he adds, with keen insight, 
" Our misery lies in feeling that we are less 
men than we were sixty years ago."^ Human'' 
afe has been unspeakably impoverished and 
narrowed by the loss of faith. Comedy has 
become tragic, and tragedy has grown mean 
and sordid. 3 Men have lost the sound of a 
Divine voice in the story of their existence 
and learned to listen to it as 

" a tale 
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury 
Signifying nothing." 

1 R. H. Hutton, Modern Guides of English Thought 
(London, Macmillan, 1887), p. 262. 

2 Le Devoir Present^ pp. 17, 19. 

3 See the plays of Ibsen : Ghosts, A DolVs House, The 
Wild Duck, etc. 



28 An Age of Doubt 

Love itself, the great purifier and ennobler, has 
been transformed in the subtle analysis of sex- 
ual passion, from the sea-born Venus, pure and 
radiant with immortal youth, to a dirt-engen- 
dered goddess, concealing her secret ugliness 
with illusory and artificial charms, and presid- 
ing with malignant power over the lower cur- 
rents of man's being, — a veritable Cloacina of 
human life.^ 
The mean- The thought of "the grandeur and misery 
man. ^£ nian," as Pascal conceived it, was painful 
but elevating. The conception of the insig- 
nificance and misery of man as scepticism pre- 
sents it, is painful and dispiriting. Born o£ 
blind force and unconscious matter, quickened 
by some mysterious cruelty to a consciousness 
of his own origin and a foreboding of his inex- 
plicable and fruitless destiny, he " drees his 
weird," between two fathomless abysses of 
gloom, as one who is indeed weary and heavy- 
laden. The music with which he accompanies 
his march towards the blank and dismal bourn, 
rolls and clashes through the literature of every 
land with deep and mournful discords, as if 
man had at last invented that strange organ of 

1 Bourget, Psychologie Contemporaine, pp, 5, 8. 



of existence. 



An Age of Doubt 29 

expression which a satirist has called " the iHfiV 
erophon.^'' ^ 

'^ Tliis philosophy," says Stendhal, comment- The nausea 
ing upon the last reflections of his hero in Rouge 
et Noir^ " ^yas perhaps true, but it was of such a 
nature as to make one long for death." And 
then the critic from whom I have quoted these 
words, adds his own commentary. " Do you 
perceive, at the close of this work, the most 
complete wliich the author has left, the break- 
ing of the tragic dawn of pessimism ? It rises, 
this dawn of blood and tears, and, like the clear- 
ness of a new-born day, it overspreads with 
crimson hues the loftiest spirits of our age, 
those whose thoughts are at the summit, those 
to whom the eyes of the men of to-morrow lift 
themselves, — religiously. I am come in this 
series of psychological studies to the fifth and 
last of the personages whom I propose to ana- 
lyze. I have examined a poet, Baudelaire ; a 
historian, Renan ; a romancer, Flaubert ; a 
philosopher, Taine ; I have just examined one 
of these composite artists in whom the critic 
and the imaginative writer are closely united ; 
and I have found in these five Frenchmen of 

1 Anton Bettelheim, article in Cosmopolis, January, 1896. 



30 An Age of Doubt 

such importance, the same philosophy of dis- 
gust with the universal nothingness."^ 
Melancholia. If we turn to Russia, which has given us 
some of the most brilliant and influential, 
though undisciplined, writers of modern fic- 
tion, do we not hear, in an accent harsher 
and more formidable, the same conclusions, 
the same cries of nausea over the inextricable 
confusion and vain efforts of human life? If 
we turn to England, do we not see the same 
cloud of melancholy, less threatening, less 
angry, but no less dark, rising from the 
chasm which doubt has made between man's 
ijmer life and the world as scientific posi- 
tivism pictures it ? How mournful is the 
voice in which W. K. Clifford proclaims, 
" The Great Companion is dead ! " How dark 
with silent, passionate grief is that lonely 
wood in which " Robert Elsmere " feels him- 
self going blind to the dearest visions of his 
former faith. ^ How black the air in which 
" Jude the Obscure " breathes out the last 
throbbings of his insurgent heart in curses 
upon his sordid and desperate fate ! ^ Let a 

1 Paul Bourget, Psychologie Contemporaine^ p. 321. 

2 Mrs. Humphry Ward, Bobert Elsmere (Macmillan, 
1888), vol. ii., chap. xxvi. 

3 Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure (Harpers, 1896). 



An Age of Doubt 31 

poet, with that sublime insight of genius 
which endures even amid the ruins created 
by its own destructive passion, speak the 
h\st word of doubt, — the epitaph of The 
City of Dreadful Night. The portentous fig- 
ure of " Melancholia " sits enthroned above her 
vast metropolis. 

" The moving Moon and stars from east to west 
Circle before her m the sea of air ; 
Shadows and gleams glide round her solemn rest. 
Her subjects often gaze up to her there : 
The strong to drink new strength of iron endurance, 
The weak, new terrors ; all, renewed assurance 
And confirmation of the old despau*." ^ 

But why despair, unless indeed because Pain gives 

1 ." . ^ ' 1 an argu- 

man, m his very nature and inmost essence, ^^g^^^/" 
is framed for an immortal hope ? No other hope. 
creature is filled with disgust and anger by 
the mere recognition of its own environment 
and the realization of its own destiny. This 
strange issue of a purely physical evolution 
in a profound revolt against itself is incred- 
ibly miraculous. Can a vast universe of atoms 
and ether, unfolding out of darkness into dark- 
ness, produce at some point in its progress, 
and that point apparently the highest, a feel- 
ing of profound disappointment with its par- -. 

1 James Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night, xxi. 12. 



32 An Age of Doubt 

tially discovered processes and resentful grief 
at its dimly foreseen end? To believe this 
would require a monstrous credulity ! Athe- 
ism does not touch this difficulty. Agnosti- 
cism evades it. There are but two solutions 
which really face the facts. One is the black, 
unspeakable creed that the source of all things 
is an unknown, mocking, malignant Power, 
whose last and most cruel jest is the misery 
of disenchanted man.^ The other is the hope- 
ful creed that the very pain which man suffers 
when his spiritual nature is denied, is proof 
that it exists, and part of the discipline by 
which a truthful, loving God would lead man 
to Himself. Let the world judge which is 
the more reasonable faith. But for our part, 
while we cling to the creed of hope, let us 
not fail to " cleave ever to the sunnier side 
of doubt," and see in the very shadow that 
it casts the evidence of a light behind and 
above it. Let us learn the meaning of that 
noble word of St. Augustine : Thou hast made 
us for Thyself and unquiet is our heart until it 
rests in Thee. 

1 " It must have been an ill-advised God, who could fall 
upon no better amusement than the transforming of Himself 
into such a hungry world as this, which is utterly miserable and 
worse than none at all." — David Friedrich Strauss, quoted 
in The British Quarterly Beview, January, 1877, p. 146. 



An Age of Doubt 33 

Yes, the inquietude of the heart which The renat*- 
doubt has robbed of its faith in God, is an i^^!^^^-^ 

' faith. 

evidence that scepticism is a mahady, not a 
normal state. The sadness of our times under 
the pressure of positive disbelief and negative 
uncertainty has in it the promise and potency 
of a return to health and happiness. Already 
we can see, if we look with clear eyes, the 
signs of what I have dared to call "the re- 
action out of the heart of a doubting age 
towards the Christianity of Christ and the 
faith in Immortal Love."^ 

Pagan poets, full of melancholy beauty and 
vague regret for lost ideals, poets of decadence 
and despondence, the age has born, to sing its 
grief and gloom. But its two great singers, 
Tennyson and Browning, strike a clearer note 
of returning faith and hope. " They resume 
the quest, and do not pause until they find 
Him whom they seek." ^ Pessimists like Hart- 
mann work back unconsciously, from the vague 
remoteness of pantheism, far in the direction, 
at least, of a theistic view of the universe. 
His later books — ReligionspMlosopMe and 

1 The Poetry of Tennyson (New York, Scribners, 1889), 
p. xiii. 

2 Vida D. Scudder, The Life of the Spirit in the Modern 
English Poets (Houghton, Mifiain, & Co., 1895), p. 333. 

D 



34 An Age of Doubt 

Selbstersetzung des Christenthums — breathe a 
different Sjpirit from his Philosophie des TJn- 
bewussten.^ One of the most cautious of our 
younger students of philosophy has noted with 
care, in a recent article, the indications that 
"the era of doubt is drawing to a close." ^ A 
statesman, like Signor Crispi, does not hesitate 
to cut loose from his former atheistic connec- 
tions and declare that " the belief in God is 
the fundamental basis of the healthy life of 
the people, while atheism puts in it the germ 
of an irreparable decay." The French critic, 
M. Edouard Rod, declares that " only religion 
can regulate at the same time human thought 
and human action."^ Mr. Benjamin Kidd, 
from the side of English sociology, assures 
us that " since man became a social creature, 
the development of his intellectual character 
has become subordinate to the development 
of his religious character," and concludes that 
religion affords the only permanent sanction 
for progress.* A famous biologist, Romanes, 

1 James Orr, The Christian View of God and the World 
(New York, Randolph, 1893), pp. 456, 457. 

2 The Methodist Beview, January, 1896. "The Return 
to Faith," by Prof. A. C. Armstrong, Jr. 

3 Edouard Rod, Les Idees Morales du Temps Present 
(Paris, 1894), p. 304. 

4 Benjamin Kidd, Social Evolution (London, 1894), 
p. 245. 



An Age of Doubt 35 

who once professed the most absolute rejec- 
tion of revealed, and the most unqualified 
scepticism of natural, religion, thinks his way 
soberly back from the painful void to a posi- 
tion where he confesses that " it is reasonable 
to be a Christian believer," and dies in the 
full communion of the church of Jfisus.^ 

All along the line, we see men who once 
thought it necessary or desirable to abandon 
forever the soul's abode of faith in the unseen, 
returning by many and devious ways from the 
far country of doubt, driven by homesickness 
and hunger to seek some path which shall at 
Jeast bring them in sight of a Father's house. 

And meanwhile we hear the conscience, the The indomi- 

ethical instinct of mankind, asserting" itself ^^^^^' 

' ° science, 

with splendid courage and patience, even in 
those who have as 3^et found no sure ground 
for it to stand upon. There is a sublime con- 
tradiction between the positivist's view of man 
as "the hero of a lamentable drama played in 
an obscure corner of the universe, in virtue of 
blind laws, before an indifferent nature, and 
with annihilation for its denouement," ^ and the 
doctrine that it is his supreme duty to sacrifice 
himself for the good of humanity. Yet many 

1 Thoughts on Beligion, p. 196. 

2 Madame L. Ackermann, 3Ia Vie (Paris, 1885), p. xviii. 



crusade in 
France. 



36 An Age of Douht 

of the sceptical thinkers of the age do not 
stumble at the contradiction. They hold fast 
to love and justice and moral enthusiasm even 
though they suspect that they themselves are 
the products of a nature which is blind and 
dumb and heartless and stupid. Never have 
the obligations of self-restraint, and helpful- 
ness, and equity, and universal brotherhood 
been preached more fervently than by some of 
the English agnostics. 
The new In France a new crusade has risen ; a cru- 

sade which seeks to gather into its hosts men 
of all creeds and men of none, and which pro- 
claims as its object the recovery of the sacred 
places of man's spiritual life, the holy land in 
which virtue shines forever by its own light, 
and the higher impulses of our nature are in- 
spired, invincible, and immortal. On its ban- 
ner M. Paul Desjardins writes the word of 
Tolstoi, ''^Ilfaut avoi7' une dme; it is necessary 
to have a soul," and declares that the crusaders 
will follow it wherever it leads them. " For 
my part," he cries, " I shall not blush certainly 
to acknowledge as sole master the Chrisw 
preached by the doctors. I shall not recoil if 
my premisses force me to believe, at last, as 
Pascal believed." 1 

1 Le Devoir Present, 45. 



All Age of Doubt 37 

In our own land such a crusade does not yet Tfie new 

, 1 »-pi T • J. X" c crusade in 

appear to be necessary, ine disintegration or ^^ 
faith under the secret processes of general 
scepticism has not yet gone far enough to make 
the peril of religion evident, or to cause a new 
marshalling of hosts to recover and defend the 
forsaken shrines of man's spiritual life. When 
the process which is now subtly working in so 
many departments of our literature has gone 
farther, it may be needful to call for such a 
crusade. If so, I believe it will come. I be- 
lieve that the leaders of thought, the artists, 
the poets of the future, when they stand face 
to face with the manifest results of negation 
and disillusion, which really destroy the very 
sphere in which alone art and poetry can live, 
will rise to meet the peril, and proclaim anew 
with one voice the watchword, " It is necessary 
to have a soul! And though a man gain the 
whole world, if his soul is lost, it shall profit, 
him nothing." But meanwhile, before the fol- 
lowing of the errors of France in literature and 
art has led us to that point of spiritual impov- 
erishment where we must imitate the organized 
and avowed effort to recover that which has 
been lost, we see a new crusade of another 
kind: a powerful movement of moral enthu- 
siasm, of self-sacrifice, of altruism, even among 



38 



An Age of Doubt 



The cry for 

a gospel of 
leadership. 



those who profess to be out of sympathy with 
Christianity, which is a sign of promise, be- 
cause it reveals a force that cries out for faith, 
and for Christian faith, to guide and direct it. 
Never was there a time when the fine aspira- 
tions of the young manhood and young woman- 
hood of our country needed a more inspiring 
and direct Christian leadership. The indica- 
tions of this need lie open to our sight on every 
side. Here is a company of refined and edu- 
cated people going down to make a college set- 
tlement among the poor and ignorant, to help 
them and lift them up. They declare that it is 
not a religious movement, that there is to be 
no preaching connected with it, that the only 
faith which it is to embody is faith in human- 
ity. They choose a leader who has only that 
faith. But they find, under his guidance, that 
the movement will not move, that the work 
cannot be done, that it faints and fails because 
it lacks the spring of moral inspiration which 
can come only from a divine and spiritual 
faith. And they are forced to seek a new 
leader who, although he is not a preacher, yet 
carries within his heart that power of religious 
conviction, that force of devotion to the will of 
God, that faith in the living and supreme 
Christ, which is in fact the centre of Christian- 



An Age of Doubt 39 

ity. All around the circle of human doubt 
and desj^air, where men and women are going 
out to enlighten and uplift and comfort and 
strengthen their fellow-men under the perplex- 
ities and burdens of life, we hear the cry for a 
gospel which shall be divine, and therefore 
sovereign and unquestionable and sure and vic- 
torious. All through the noblest aspirations 
and efforts and hopes of our age of doubt, we 
feel the longing, and we hear the demand, for 
a new inspiration of Christian faith. 

These are the signs of the times. Surely we The signs oj 
must take note of them, surely we must labour '^^ ^"'^^*' 
and pray to understand their true significance, 
if we are to say anything to our fellow-men 
which shall be worth our saying and their 
hearing. 

Renan made a strange remark not long be- 
fore his death : " I fear that the work of the 
Twentieth Century will consist in taking out 
of the waste-basket a multitude of excellent 
ideas which the Nineteenth Century has heed- 
lessly thrown into it." The sceptic's fear is 
the believer's hope. Once more the fields are 
white unto the harvest. The time is ripe ; 
ripe in the sorrow of scepticism, ripe in the 
return of aspiration, ripe in the enthusiasm of 



40 An Age of Doubt 

humanity, for a renaissance of the spiritual 
life. 

Already the horizon brightens with the tokens 
of this renaissance. There is a new interest in 
religion as the most living of all topics. There 
is a new sense of its vital meaning for the whole 
life of man. There is a new determination to 
apply it all around the circle of human respon- 
sibilities and test its value everywhere. There 
is a new cry for a Christ who shall fulfil the 
hopes of all the ages. There is a new love 
waiting for Him, a new devotion ready to fol- 
low His call. Doubt, in its nobler aspect, — 
honest, unwilling, morally earnest doubt, — has 
been a John the Baptist to prepare the way for 
His coming. The men of to-day are saying, as 
certain Greeks said to apostles of old, " Sirs, we 
would see Jesus." The disciple who can lead 
the questioning spirits to Him, is the man who 
has the Gospel for an Age of Doubt. 



II 

THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON 



Subtlest thought shall fail and \earnmg falter, 
Churches change, forms perish, systems go, 

But our human needs, they will not alter, 
Christ no after age shall e'er outgrow. 

Yea, Amen ! O changeless One, Thou only, 

Art life's guide and spiritual goal, 
Thou the Light across the dark vale lonely, — 

Thou the eternal haven of the soul. 

— John Campbell Shairp. 



n 

THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON 

The prevalence and the quality of modern ffow shall 

J-,, 'ii-.j' J ±. J J •, we serve the 

doubt, with its discontent and sadness, its ^^^^^g^^ ^g^f 
self-misgivings and reactions, its moral incon- 
sistencies and fine enthusiasms, bring the 
preacher who is alive and in earnest, face to 
face with the most important question of his 
life. What can I do, what ought I to do, as 
a preacher, to meet the strange, urgent, com- 
plicated needs of such a time as this? 

First of all, as a man, — and every preacher 
ought to be a man, though not every man is 
tound to be a preacher — as a man, it is nec- 
essary to lead a clean, upright, steadfast, use- 
ful life, purged from all insincerity, and lifted 
above all selfishness, and especially above that 
form of religious selfishness which is the beset- 
ting peril of those who feel themselves rich in 
faith in the midst of a generation that has been 
made poor by unbelief. Never has there been a 
time when character and conduct counted for 

43 



44 



The Crospel of a Person 



Proposed 
remedies 
insufficient. 



more than they do to-day. A life on a high 
level, yet full of helpful, healing sympathy 
for all life on its lowest levels, is the first debt 
which we owe to our fellow-men in this age. 

But beyond this, is there not something per- 
sonal and specific which the conditions of the 
present demand from us, as men who have not 
only the common duty of living, but also the 
peculiar vocation of speaking directly and con- 
stantly to the inner life of our brothers ? We 
want some distinct and definite message, which 
is to be clearly formed in our thought and feel- 
ing and utterance, as the central, guiding, domi- 
nating force in all our efforts to realize the fine 
aspiration of the old hymn ; 

" To serve the present age, 
My calling to fulfil, — 
Oh, may it all my powers engage 
To do my Master's will ! " 

Now the moment we look at the problem in 
this light, we see that there are various lines 
of activity open to us, and along all of these 
lines men are making promises and prophecies 
of usefulness and success. The cures which 
are suggested for the malady of the age are 
many and diverse. Of some of them we need 
speak only in passing, to recognize that for 
us, at least, they are unsuitable. 



The Grospel of a Person 45 

Herr Max Nordaii, for example, in his Reaction to 

11 . 1 1 T^ ^' T barbarism. 

curious and chaotic book, Degeneration, diag- 
noses the sickness of modern times as the 
result, not of a loss of faith, but of a fatal 
increase of nervous irritability produced by 
the strain of an intricate civilization. He 
declares that the malady must run its course, 
but that in time it will be healed by the re- 
storative force of ^^misoneism, that instinctive, 
invincible aversion to progress and its difficul- 
ties that Lombroso has studied so much and to 
which he has given this name." ^ 

The name is certainly not a pretty one, nor 
do I think that, after the first feeling of pleas- 
ure in learning to pronounce a newly imported 
word has passed, the contemplation of its 
meaning will afford us any profound sense of 
satisfaction or hope. The picture of mankind 
as a magnified Jemmy Button, returning from 
his temporary residence in England to his na- 
tive Terra del Fuego, and flinging away his 
gloves and patent-leather shoes, to relapse into 
a peaceful and contented barbarism, is not in- 
spiring. Who is there that would care to de- 
vote his life to the hastening of such a result ? 
Who but the veriest quack, himself affected by 
the hysteria of the age, would think of curing 

1 Max Nordau, Degeneration (New York, 1895), p. 542. 



46 The Gospel of a Person 

the convulsions of St. Vitus' dance in an over- 
strained humanity by throwing the patient into 
tlie stupor of typhoid fever ? 
Psychical Another and very different method of deal- 

ing with the malady of the times is suggested 
by those who believe that Science itself, in the 
immense future advance which is predicted for 
it, will supply the antidote for the scepticism 
which has accompanied its previous course. 
New discoveries will be made which will sup- 
port the proposition : II faut avoir une dme. 
New arguments will be constructed which will 
give us a scientific demonstration of the un- 
seen universe and the future life. It is in 
this spirit that Mr. F. W. H. Myers calls at- 
tention to the phenomena of mesmerism and 
hypnotism and telepathy, and suggests that 
the need of the age is a more cordial and 
general interest in the investigations of the 
Society of Psychical Research. ^ I do not 
think, for one, that these investigations are 
to be slighted or despised. They may be of 
great value. But it is difficult to believe that 
this is the source to which the preacher is to 
look either for his inspiration or his message. 
For, in the first place, it is highly improbable 
that science is about to make any such aston- 

^ Science and A Future Life (Macmillan, 1893), pp. 34, 44. 



The Gospel of a Person 47 

ishing advance, either in methods or results, 
as some men anticipate. The best authorities 
admit this, and warn us that there are "limi- 
tations in the nature of the universe which 
must circumscribe the achievements of specu- 
lative research." 1 Mr. Myers hunself makes 
the same admission, and says that so far as 
our discoveries are confined to the physical 
side of things, there is no ground whatever 
for sanguine hope. Moreover, in the second 
place, whatever work may be done in this di- 
rection must be accomplished, not by preachers, 
but by scientists. The average preacher has 
no particular vocation, and no adequate qual- 
ification, for the task. Neither by tempera- 
ment nor by training is he fitted to judge 
of these matters. Now and then you will find 
a rare exception ; but as a rule nothing could 
be of less value than the scientific sermons of 
preachers who have only a bowing acquaint- 
ance with science. If the cure of modern 
scepticism is to be accomplished by the further 
progress of physical investigation, at least we 
must confess that this enterprise is not for us. 

But there are two other ways of deal- 
ing with current doubt which demand closer 
attention. One of them is the philosophic 

1 C. H. Pearson, National Life and Character (Macmillan, 
1893), p. 291. 



48 



The Q-ospel of a Person 



Thorough- 
going 
rationalism. 



method of a reductio ad ahsurdum. The logic 
of rationalism is applied to its own premisses 
in order to show that they are unfounded and 
unverifiable. The result of this attack, as it 
has been made with a relentless and masterly- 
hand by Mr. Arthur James Balfour in his 
Defence of Philosophic Doubt, is to exhibit the 
startling fact that "the universe as repre- 
sented to us by science is wholly unimaginable, 
and that our conception of it is what in The- 
ology would be termed purely anthropomor- 
phic."^ The evidence for the existence of a 
world composed of atoms and ether is no 
more conclusive, the account which science 
gives of their nature and qualities is no more 
coherent, than the evidence and account which 
faith gives of a world created by a personal 
God and inhabited by immortal souls. Pure 
agnosticism is thus forced into the service of 
Christianity and used to destroy all a priori 
objections to it. Giant Doubt is brought low 
by turning his own weapons against himself, 
even as Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, slew the 
Egyptian "with his own spear." ^ 

The value of this service of philosophy is 

1 A Defence of Philosophic Doubt (Macmillan, 1879), 
pp. 284, 285, 287-289. 

2 1 Chron. xi. 23. 



The Gospel of a Person 49 

considerable. The Christian preacher ought 
not to be ignorant of its actual results, for 
they are such as to encourage him in preserv- 
ing his independence against the tyrannous 
claims of positivism ; nor unfamiliar with its 
methods, for they are fitted to train and disci- 
pline his mind by hard exercise and exact work. 
But it must be remembered that only a mighty 
man of valour, one who, like Benaiah, ranks 
above the host, and above the thirty captains of 
the host, can hope to play a leading part in this 
enterprise of "carrying the war into Africa." 
It must be remembered also that the reduction 
of scientific naturalism to an absurdity falls far 
short of the establishment of religious faith as 
a verity. Grateful for all that philosophy can 
do, and is doing, to clear the way, the preacher 
must have a principle, an impulse, a line of 
action which will carry him beyond the nega- 
tive result of making unbelief doubtful, to the 
positive result of making belief credible. 

At this point our attention is called to an- Theological 
other way of dealing with current scepticism, "^^^ *-^^" ^^^ 
— the dogmatic method, which relies for the 
defence of faith upon the construction of a 
complete and consistent system of doctrine in 
regard to God and man, the present world and 
the future life. Faith, in other words, is to 



50 The Gospel of a Person 

be established by fortification, surrounded and 
entrenched with banquette and parapet, scarp 
and ditch and counterscarp of iron-worded 
proof, defended on every side by solid syllo- 
gisms, and impregnable against all assaults of 
unbelief. It is foolish not to recognize the 
great work which has been done along this line 
by wise and strong men in the past. Those 
who affect to despise it and make light of it, 
are simply ignorant of some of . the loftiest 
achievements of the human intellect. The 
works of Augustine and Anselm and Thomas 
Aquinas, of John Calvin and Richard Hooker 
and John Owen, of Ralph Cud worth and 
William Chilling worth, of Richard Baxter and 
Samuel Clarke and Joseph Butler, of Jonathan 
Edwards and Charles Hodge and W. G. T. 
Shedd, are massive works. They impose a 
sense of wonder upon every thoughtful ob- 
server. 
Changed But concerning the attempt to conquer mod- 

GOThd'it'iOTlS 

ern doubt by a system of dogmatic theology, 
certain things must be remembered. The con- 
ditions of warfare change from age to age. 
The vast fortresses of solid stone whose posses- 
sion was once regarded as the security of 
nations, are not ranked so high as they were 
a hundred years ago. The earthwork, the 



The Gospel of a Person 51 

rifled cannon, the iron-clad ship, the torpedo, 
have wrought great changes. Deductive logic 
is just as strong as it ever was, but somehow or 
other men are not as much impressed by it. 
Induction is the method of to-day: and that is 
a subtle, evasive, mobile method. It cannot 
be shut in by a ring of fortresses. Already 
the dogmatic systems in which the inductive 
method is ignored or subordinated (whether 
made long ago, or constructed yesterday on 
ancient models) are out of date. They are 
good for the men who are within them, but 
on the outside world they have no more effect 
than Windsor Castle would have in protecting 
England from a foreign invasion. 

We feel sure that theology, in time, must The future 
and will vindicate its claim to be considered as ^^ ^^^' 
an essential factor in the intellectual life of 
man, by adapting itself to the changed condi- 
tions, and producing even mightier works by 
the new methods than those which it produced 
by the old. Already we see the promise of a 
renaissance of dogmatics in such books as Mul- 
ford's The Republic of Grod, Harris' The Self- 
Revelation of Grod, Orr's The Christian View of 
God and the Worlds and Fairbairn's The Place 
of Christ in Modern Tlieology. But we must 
remember that even those who anticipate and 



52 The Grospel of a Person 

Great things predict this reconstruction of the old truth on 

demandedof . ,. , ,i . ,. m 

the new the- ^^^ ^^^ lines most enthusiastically, recognize 
clogian. that it must be a long and difficult task, and 
that the man who is to be a master-builder 
must have a magnificent equipment. How ex- 
hilarating at the first sight, but at the second 
sight how overwhelming and discouraging, are 
the demands of the age upon him who would 
fain be an epoch-making theologian, as they are 
stated, for example, in Mr. Balfour's Founda- 
tions of Belief or in Dr. George A. Gordon's 
inspiring book The Christ of To-day. Truly it 
appears that such a man must realize the sup- 
position of St. Paul : he must speak with the 
tongues of men and of angels, and have the 
gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries 
and all knowledge. Who is sufficient for these 
things? It will take a long time for the best 
of us to learn all this. Perhaps the most of us 
may never go so far. Meantime, whether we 
are labouring towards that goal, or despairing 
of it, we need something divinely simple and 
divinely true that we can preach at once, di- 
rectly, joyfully, fervently to the heart of the age. 
A view of the world, a Welt-anschauung, is de- 
sirable, perhaps in the long run necessary, for 
the mind of man ; but there is another thing 



TJie Gospel of a Person 53 

which is more desirable and of prior necessity, ^ starting- 
and that is a standpoint of practical conviction f^l^f^ ^^ ^j^^ 
from which to obtain such a view. It may be fi^^^ neces- 
but a foothold, only a single point of contact, 
but we must have it, and it must be solid as a 
fact. A complete and consistent theology is a 
consummation most devoutly to be wished for ; 
but before it can come there must be some- 
thing else, — a living, active power of faith in 
the soul. This power, as we believe, already 
exists in every human being. But there is 
only one thing that can awaken it and call it 
into action, and that is a gospel^ a message 
clear as light, which in its very essence is a 
force to quicken and stir the soul. 

We look out upon the world and we see that Preaching 
some men have had such a gospel without be- ^^ power, 
ing in any sense finished and systematic theo- 
logians. St. Paul and St. Peter and St. John 
had it. St. Chrysostom and St. Francis of 
Assisi and Savonarola had it. John Wesley 
and George Whitfield had it. In different ages 
and under different conditions these preachers 
had the primal message which moves men to 
believe. And in our own age, under our own 
conditions, a like message has been proclaimed 
with power. Pere Lacordaire preached such a 
message in Notre Dame, and Canon Liddon in 



64 The Grospel of a Person 

St. Paul's, to listening thousands. Bishop 
Brooks made it thrill like a celestial music 
through the young manhood of America; and 
Dwight L. Moody has spoken it with vigorous 
directness in every great city that knows the 
English tongue. In many things, in ecclesias- 
tical relation, in theological statement, in dress, 
in manner, in language, these preachers are 
unlike. One thing only is the same in all of 
them, and that is the source of their power. 
Their central message, the core of their preach 
ing, is the piercing, moving, personal gospe' 
of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God and Sav 
iour of mankind. This, in its simplest form ; 
this, in its clearest expression ; this presenta- 
tion of a person to persons in order that they 
may first know, and then love and trust and 
follow Him — this is pre-eminently the gospel 
for an age of doubt. 



The Gospel The adaptation of our central message, thus 
conceived and thus expressed, to meet the 
peculiar needs of a time of general scepticism, 
is the theme of this lecture. I do not say that 
this is the whole of Christianity. I do not say 
that when the preacher has delivered this mes- 
sage in this form he has fulfilled all of his 



The Gospel of a Person 55 

duties. He may have to bear testimony against 
errors of thought and vices of conduct ; he is 
certainly bound to give encouragement and 
guidance to new efforts of virtue and new en- 
terprises of benevolence in every field. But 
his first and greatest duty, the discharge of 
which is to give him influence over doubting 
hearts and strength for all his other work, is 
simply to preach Christ. 

This gospel meets the needs of the present The gospel 
time because it is the gospel of a fact. " * 

Personality is a fact. Indeed we may say 
that it is the aboriginal fact ; the source of all 
perception ; the starting-point of all thought ; 
the informing and moulding principle of all 
language. " All human observation implies 
that the mind, the 'I,' is a thing in itself, a 
fixed point in a world of change, of which world 
of change its own organs form a part. It is the 
same, yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow. It 
was what it is, when its organs were of a dif- 
ferent shape and consisted of different matter 
from their present shape and matter. It will 
be what it is, when they have gone through 
other changes."^ 

1 Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Liberty, Equality, Frater- 
nity. Quoted by Hutton, Contemporary Thought, I., p. 114. 



66 



The Gospel of a Person 



Personality 
is the foun- 
dation. 



This fact of a rational, free, conscious, persist- 
ent self is the foundation of all sensation and 
of all reflection ; it is the basis of physics as well 
as of metaphysics. By contrast it gives us our 
first notion of matter ; by resistance, our first 
notion of force ; by operation, our first notion 
of causality. It is a necessary assumption even 
in the philosophies of agnosticism, positivism, 
and materialism. They cannot move a step 
without it. 

" They reckon ill who leave me out." 

To deny personality is to deny the possibility 
of any kind of knowledge and reduce the uni- 
verse to a blank. 1 

Moreover, it is not only true that the recogni- 
tion of our own personality lies at the root of 
perception and reasoning. It is also true that 
contact with other personalities, conscious, in- 
telligent, free, and persistent like ourselves, is 
the gateway through which we reach the reality 
of all external things. To a solitary mind the 
outward world may be only a dream. But the 
moment two minds come into contact and com- 
munication, it becomes at least a permanent 
possibility of sensation. By comparison and 
contrast with the sensations and experiences of 

1 Alfred Williams Momerie, Personality, the Beginning 
and End of Metaphysics (Blackwood, 1889), pp. 23, 132. 



The Gospel of a Person 67 

others, we verify our own. If it were not for 
this the whole universe would dissolve around 
us like the baseless fabric of a vision. The 
subtle analysis of modern science, transforming 
the apparently solid elements into invisible 
atoms, and these atoms into vortex rings in 
the impalpable and immeasurable ether, throws 
us back, more and more, upon personality, sub- 
jective and objective, as the only thing that 
remains sure and immutable. 

Persons, then, are the most real and substan- Persons are 
tial objects of our knowledge. They touch us 
at more points, they affect us in more ways and 
with greater intensity, they fit more closely into 
the faculties and powers of our own being, than 
anything else in the universe. A person who 
has influenced us or our fellow-men leaves a 
more profound, positive, permanent, and real 
impression than any other fact whatsoever. 
We live as persons in a world of persons, far 
more truly than we live in a world of phenomena 
or laws or ideas. 

Now, in an age that is characterized, as some 
German writer has said, by " a hunger for facts," 
the gospel of a person, if it is rightly appre- 
hended and preached, ought to have peculiar 
power because it is a factual gospel. We can 
come to those who are under the benumbing 



68 The Gospel of a Person 

spell of universal doubt and say : Here is a 
fact, a personality, real and imperishable. It is 
not merely a doctrine that was believed in Pales- 
tine eighteen hundred years ago. It is some 
one who was born and lived among men. It is 
not merely a theory of God and the soul and 
the future life that sprang up in the East in the 
first century and has strangely spread itself 
over the world. This religion is historical in 
every sense of the word, as the actual fulfilment 
of an ancient hope, and the starting-point of a 
new life. 
The reality xhe person of Jesus Christ stands solid in the 
history of man. He is indeed more substantial, 
more abiding, in human apprehension, than any 
form of matter, or any mode of force. The 
conceptions of earth and air and fire and water 
change and melt around Him, as the clouds 
melt and change around an everlasting moun- 
tain peak. All attempts to resolve Him into 
a myth, a legend, an idea, — and hundreds of 
such attempts have been made, — have drifted 
over the enduring reality of His character and 
left not a rack behind. The result of all criti- 
cism, the final verdict of enlightened common- 
sense, is that Christ is historical. He is such a 
person as men could not have imagined if they 



Tlie Gospel of a Person 59 

would, and would not have imagined if they 
could. He is neither Greek myth, nor Hebrew 
legend. The artist capable of fashioning Him 
did not exist, nor could he have found the 
materials. A non-existent Christianity did not 
spring out of the air and create a Christ. A 
real Christ appeared in the world and created 
Christianity. This is what we mean by the 
gospel of a fact. 

n 

And here we come at once into sight of the ^« gospel 

of CL fOTCBt 

second quality of this gospel which is pecul- 
iarly fitted to meet the needs of a doubting age. 
If it be true that a person is a fact, it is no 
less true that a person is a force. The world 
moves by personality. All the great currents 
of history have flowed from persons. Organi- 
zation is powerful; but no organization has 
ever accomplished anything until a person has 
stood at the centre of it and filled it with his 
thought, with his life. Truth is mighty and 
must prevail. But it never does prevail actu- 
ally until it gets itself embodied, incarnated, in 
a personality. Christianity has an organiza- 
tion. Christianity has a doctrine. But the 
force of Christianity, that which made it move 



60 The Gospel of a Person 

and lent it power to move the world, is the Per- 
son at the heart of it, who gives vitality to the 
organization and reality to the doctrine. All 
the abstract truths of Christianity might have 
come into the world in another form, — nay, 
the substance of these truths did actually come 
into the world, dimly and partially through the 
fragmentary religions of the nations, more 
clearly and with increasing, prophetic light 
through the inspired Scriptures of the He- 
brews ; but still the world would not stir, still 
the truth could not make itself felt as a univer- 
sal force in the life of humanity until 

" The Word had breath, and wrought 

With human hands the creed of creeds, 
In loveliness of perfect deeds, 
More strong than all poetic thought." ^ 

I think we must get back, in our conception of 
Christianity and in our preaching of it, to this 
primary position. The fount and origin of its 
power was, and continued to be, and still is, the 
Person Christ. 
Christ was This was the secret of His ministry. He 
gospel. Himself was the central word of His own 

preaching. He offered Himself to the world 
as the solution of its difficulties and the source 



1 



Tennyson, In Memoriam^ xxxvi. 



The Gospel of a Person 61 

of a new life. lie asked men simply to be- 
lieve in llim, to love Him, to follow Him. He 
called the self-righteous to humble themselves 
to His correction, the sinful to confide in His 
forgiveness, the doubting to trust His assur- 
ance, and the believing to accept His guid- 
ance into fuller light. ^ To those who became 
His disciples He gave doctrine and instruction 
in many things. But to those who were not 
yet His disciples, to the world, He offered first 
of all Himself, not a doctrine, not a plan of 
life, but a living Person. This was the sub- 
stance of His first sermon when He stood up 
in the synagogue at Nazareth and having read 
from the Book of Isaiah the prophecy of the 
Great Liberator, declared unto the people 
"This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your 
ears." 2 This was the attraction of His univer- 
sal invitation, " Come unto Me, all ye that 
labour and are heavy laden and I will give 
you rest." 2 This was the heart of His sum- 
mary of His completed work when He said, " I, 
if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all 
men unto Me."* 

1 Henry Latham, Pastor Pastorum (New York, James 
Pott & Co., 1891), pp. 273-275. 

2 St. Luke iv. 16-21. 

3 St. Matt. xi. 28. 

4 St. John xii. 32. 



62 



The G-ospel of a Person 



The life of 
the Church 
flowed from 
Chnst. 



We are not considering, at this moment, the 
tremendous implications of such a personal 
self-assertion, unparalleled, I believe, in the 
founder of any other religion. We pass by 
for the present that famous and inevitable 
alternative, Aut Christus Deus^ aut homo non 
bonus est. The point, now, is simply this. 
As a matter of history, setting aside all ques- 
tion of the divine inspiration and authority 
of the Gospels, taking them merely as a 
trustworthy report of a certain sequence of 
events,^ it is plain that the force which started 
the religion of Jesus was the person Jesus. 
Christ was His own Christianity. Christ was 
the core of His own gospel. 

Read on through the other books of the New 
Testament, the Acts and the Epistles, and you 
will see that they are just the record of the 
operation of this force in life and literature. 
It was this that sent the apostles out into the 



1 The evidence for the historic trustworthiness of the 
Gospels may be found summed up in its modern form in Dr. 
Salmon's Introduction to the New Testament^ fourth edition 
(New York, Young & Co., 1889); in Bishop Lightfoot's Es- 
says on ^'■Supernatural Beligion^'' (Macmillan, 1889); in 
Beyschlag's New Testament Theology (Edinburgh, T. & T. 
Clark, 1895), pp. 29-31, 216-221 of volume i. ; and in Prof. 
George P. Pisher's Grounds of Theistic and Christian Be- 
Zie/ (Scribners, 1883). 



The Gospel of a Person 63 

world, reluctantly and hesitatingly at first, then 
joyfully and triumphantly, like men driven by 
an irresistible impulse. It was the manifesta- 
tion of Christ that converted them,^ the love 
of Christ that constrained them,^ the power of 
Christ that impelled them.^ He was their 
certainty* and their strength.^ He was their 
peace ^ and their hope.'* For Christ they la- 
boured and suffered ; ^ in Christ they gloried ; ^ 
for Christ's sake they lived and died.^^ They 
felt and they declared that the life that was in 
them was His life.^^ They were confident that 
they could do all things through Christ which 
strengthened them.^^ xhe offices of the Church 
— apostle, bishop, deacon, evangelist, — call 
them by what names you will — were simply 
forms of service to Him as Master ; ^^ the 
doctrines of the Church were simply unfold- 
ings of what she had received from Him as 
Teacher ; ^^ the worship of the Church, as dis • 
tinguished from that of the Jewish Synagogue 
and the Heathen Temple, was the adoration 
of Christ as Lord.^^ 

Now it was precisely this relation of the 

1 Gal. i. 16. 6 Eph. ii. 14. n Gal. ii. 20. 

2 2 Cor. V. 14. 7 Col. i. 27. 12 phii. iv. 13. 

» 2 Cor. xii. 9. 8 ^hiV iii. 8-10. i3 Eph. iv. 8-12. 

* 2 Tim. i. 12. 9 Gal. vi. 14. i* 1 Cor. xi. 1, 23 ; xv. 3. 

6 2 Tim. ii. 1. 10 2 Cor. iv. 5, 11. i^ phii. n n- 1 Cor. xii. 3. 



64 



The Gospel of a Person 



The influ- 
ence of 
Christianity 
came from 
Christ. 



The magic 

of Christ's 
name. 



early Church, in her organization and doctrine 
and worship, to the person Christ, held fast 
in her memory as identical with the real Jesus 
who was born in Bethlehem and crucified on 
Calvary, conceived in her faith as still living 
and present with His disciples, — it was this 
personal animation of the Church by Christ 
that gave her influence over men. Contrary 
to all human probability, against the prejudice 
of the Hebrews who abhorred the name of a 
crucified man, against the prejudice of the 
Greeks and Romans who despised the name 
of a common Jew, she made her way, not by 
concealing, but by exalting and glorifying, the 
name of Jesus Christ. Indeed, it seems as if 
her career of conquest was actually delayed 
until that name was taken up and written upon 
her banners. It was in Antioch, where the 
disciples were first called Christians,^ that the 
missionary enterprise of the Church began, and 
it was from that centre, with that title, that 
she went out to her triumph. 

The name of Christ was magical ; not as a 
secret and unintelligible incantation, but as 
the sign of a real person, known and loved. 
It enlightened and healed and quickened the 
heart of an age which, like our own, was dark 
1 Acts xi. 26 ; xiii. 1-3. 



The Gospel of a Person 65 

and sorrowful and heavy with doubt. It was 
the charm wliich drew men to Christianity out 
of the abstractions of philosophy,^ and the con- 
fusions of idolatry darkened with a thousand 
personifications but empty of all true person- 
ality. The music of that name rang througl\ 
all the temple of the Church, and to its har- 
monies her walls were builded. The acknow- 
ledgment of that name was the mark of Christian 
discipleship. To confess that " Jesus is the 
Christ " was the way to enter the Church. The 
symbolism of that name was the mark of Chris- 
tian worship. The central rites of the Church 
were baptism into Christ and communion with 
Christ. Fidelity to His name was the crown 
of Christian martyrdom. Unnumbered multi- 
tudes of men and women and children went 
down to death because they would not deny 
the Christ. Whatever the early Church 
was and did, beyond a doubt her character 
and her activity were but the resultant of 
the personal influence that flowed from Jesus 
Christ.2 

When we turn to follow the history of Chris- 
tianity through the later centuries down to the 

1 See Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, chap. viii. 

2 George B. Stevens, The Pauline Theology (New York, 
Scribners, 1892), pp. 321-323. 



66 



The Gospel of a Person 



Christ is 
the charm 
of Christi- 
anity. 



Thepersonai present time, we see that the same thing is 
Christ true. The temporal power of the Bishop of 

continues. Rome doubtless grew out of the union of the 
Church with the Empire. The immense wealth 
and secular authority of ecclesiastics may be 
traced to social and political causes. But the 
inward, vitalizing, self-propagating power of 
Christianity as a religion has always come from 
the person of Jesus who stands at the heart of 
it. The attraction of its hymns and psalms and 
spiritual songs, the beauty of its holy days and 
solemn ceremonies, were derived from Him 
who is the central figure in praise and prayer. 
The renaissance of Christian Art sprang from 
the desire to picture to the imagination the 
visible, adorable form and face of Him whom 
speculative theology had so often concealed or 
obscured. The penetrating and abiding fra- 
grance of Christian literature resides in those 
books, like The Imitation of Christy in which the 
sweetness of His character is embalmed forever. 
The potency of Christian preaching comes from, 
and is measured by, the clearness of the light 
which it throws upon the personality of Jesus. 
Read the roll of those in every age whom the 
world has acknowledged as the best Christians, 
kings and warriors and philosophers, martyrs 
and heroes and labourers in every noble cause, 



The Gospel of a Person 67 

the purest and tlie highest of mankind, and you 
will see that the test by which they are judged, 
the mark by which they are recognized, is 
likeness and loyalty to the personal Christ. 
Then turn to the work which the Church is 
doing to-day in the lowest and darkest fields 
of human life, among the submerged classes of 
our great cities, among the sunken races of 
heathendom, and you cannot deny that the 
force of that work to enlighten and uplift, still 
depends upon the simplicity and reality with 
which it reveals the person of Jesus to the 
hearts of men. Christianity as a missionary 
religion would be fatally crippled if you took 
out of it the familiar story of Jesus and His 
love. 

"Mr. Darwin," says Admiral Sir James Sulli- ^^^ testi- 

^ T r 1 1 • • • mony of a 

van, " had oiten expressed to me nis conviction doubter. 
that it was utterly useless to send missionaries 
to such a set of savages as the Fuegians, proba- 
bly the very lowest of the human race. I had 
always replied that I did not believe any human 
beings existed too low to comprehend the sim- 
ple message of the Gospel of Christ. After 
many years he wrote to me that the recent 
account of the mission showed that he had been 
wrong and I right . . . and he requested me 
to forward to the Society an enclosed cheque 



68 



The Gospel of a Person 



The force 

which 
breaks the 
inertia of 
unbelief. 



for <£5, as a testimony of his interest in theii 
good work." ^ 

Observe, we are not constructing an argu- 
ment. We are only tracing a force, — the 
force that flows from the person of Jesus Christ. 
The more closely, the more powerfully we can 
feel it in ourselves and in others, the more confi- 
dently we can come to a doubting age and say : 
Here is this force, intense, persistent, far- 
reaching. It has moved all kinds of men, 
from the highest to the lowest. What do you 
make of it ? What will you do with it ? Is 
it not the only thing that can lift and move 
you out of your doubt ? For scepticism is 
just the inertia of the soul which stands 
poised between contrary and mutually destruc- 
tive theories. From that state of impotence 
there is but one deliverance, and that is by 
force, the force of life embodied in a person. 



in 



The gospel g^t the f orce which proceeds from the person 

spiritual ^^ Jcsus is not mere power, blind and purpose- 

world. less. It moves always in a certain direction. 

It has a quality in it which produces certain 

1 Alfred Barry, Some Lights of Science on the Faith 
(London, Longmans, 1892), p. 116. 



The Gospel of a Person 69 

results. And one of these results is an im- 
mediate and overwhelming sense of the reality 
and nearness of spiritual things. This is the 
third point of adaptation in the gospel of the 
personal Christ to the needs of a sceptical age. 
It carries with itself an evidence of things not 
seen, a substance of things hoped for. 

An aura of wonder and mystery surrounded The mystery 
Jesus of Nazareth in His earthly life. All who 
came in contact with Him felt it ; in love, if 
they desired to believe ; in repulsion, if they 
hated to believe. In His presence, faith in the 
invisible, in the soul, in the future life, in 
God, revived and unfolded with new bloom 
and colour. In His presence hypocrisy was 
silenced and afraid, but sincere piety found a 
voice and prayed. This effluence of His char- 
acter breathes from the whole record of His 
life. It was not merely what He said to men 
about the eternal verities that convinced them. 
It was something in Himself, an atmosphere 
surrounding Him, and a silent radiance shining 
from Him, that made it easier for them to 
believe in their own spiritual nature and in 
the Divine existence and presence. He drew 
out of their fallen and neglected hearts, by 
some celestial attraction, spontaneous, gentle, 
irresistible, a new efflorescence of faith and 



70 The Gospel of a Person 

hope and love. Where He came a spiritual 
springtide flowed over the landscape of the 
inner life. Blossoms appeared in the earth 
and the time for the singing of birds was come. 
The effect of Faith was not imposed on doubting^ hearts 

Hispres- . 

ence, by an external and mechanical process. It 

grew in the warmth that streamed from Him. 
It was not merely that men were at their best 
in His company, except, indeed, those who 
were at their worst through sullen resistance 
and malignant alarm at His power. It was 
that men were conscious of something far bet- 
ter than their best, a transcendent force, an 
influence from the immeasurable heights above 
them. And to withstand it they must sink 
below themselves, make new falsehoods and 
new negations to bind them down, grapple 
themselves more closely to the base, the 
earthly, the sensual. But if they yielded to 
that influence, it lifted and moved their 
thoughts inevitably upward. It was not 
merely what He told them of His own sight 
of spiritual things. It was what they saw 
reflected in His face and form of that loftier, 
wider outlook. He was like one standing on a 
high peak, reporting of the sunrise to men in 
the dark valley. They heard His words. But 
they saw also upon His countenance the glow 



The Gospel of a Person 71 

of dawn, and dazzling all about Him the 
incommunicable splendours of a new day. 

This was the effect of the personality of 
Jesus, as He stood amid the shadows and un- 
certainties of human life ; an effect strangely 
overlooked and ignored, often even beclouded 
and hidden, in much that has been written 
about Him by theologians and historians. I 
do not dream that I can put it into words. 
But I know that it can be felt as a reality in 
the Gospels. And I turn back to one who saw 
Him face to face, one who touched His hand 
and leaned upon His bosom, for the expression 
of the soul-uplifting, faith-begetting wonder of 
the person of Christ : The Word was made flesh 
and dwelt among us, and we beheld Sis glory, 
the glory as of the only-hegotten of the Father, 
full of grace and truth.^ 

Nor has this effect vanished from the world The inflw- 

S71CC of His 

with the removal of the bodily presence of picture. 
Jesus. It has perpetuated itself by its own 
vital power, increasing rather than diminish- 
ing. It still flows from the picture of His life 
which is preserved in the Gospels, from the 
image of His character as it is formed in the 
minds of men. Eliminate, if you please, what 
is called the miraculous element. Make what 
1 St. Jolin i. 14. 



unique. 



72 The G-ospel of a Person 

allowance you will for the enthusiasm and 
unguarded utterance of His disciples. There 
still remains that enthusiasm itself to be reck- 
oned with, an enthusiasm which was kindled 
by Him alone. There still remains the figure 
of the person of Christ, who never can be 
expressed in terms of matter and force, who 
never can be explained by natural and histori- 
cal causes, who carries us by His own inherent 
mystery into the presence of the spiritual, the 
divine, the supernatural. 
Christ Something of this spiritual light, I will ad- 

mit, — nay, I will maintain with joyous and 
firm conviction, — comes from every human 
personality, even the lowliest, in so far as it 
refuses to be summed up in terms of sense 
perception, in so far as it gives evidence, by 
its affections and hopes and fears, of ele- 
ments in man that are not of the dust. But 
in Christ this light is transcendent and unique, 
because He manifestly surpasses the ordinary 
attainments of humanity, because He cannot 
be accounted for by the laws of heredity 
and environment. The more closely we apply 
these laws, the more clearly He shines out 
above them.^ 

"The learned men of our day," says M. 
1 J. S. Mill, Essays on Beligion, p. 253. 



The Gospel of a Person 73 

Pierre Loti in his latest book, La GalilSe^ 
"have endeavoured to find a human explica- 
tion of His mission, but they have not yet 
reached it. . . . Around Him, none the less, 
there still glows a radiance of beams wliich 
cannot be comprehended." ^ 

Historically He appears alone, as no great Christ 

, 1 1 r • solitary. 

man has ever appeared beiore or since. 
Heroes, teachers, and leaders of men have 
always been seen as central stars in larger 
constellations, surrounded by lesser but kin- 
dred lights. Plato shines in conjunction with 
Socrates and Aristotle; Caesar with Pompey and 
Crassus ; Luther with Melanchthon and Cal- 
vin ; Shakespeare with Beaumont and Fletcher 
and Ben Jonson ; Napoleon surrounded with 
his brilliant staff of marshals and diplomats ; 
WordsAVorth among the mild glories of the 
Lake poets. In every case, if you search the 
neighbourhood of a great name, you will find 
not a blank sky, but an encircling galaxy. 
But Jesus Christ stands in an immense sol- 
itude. Among the prophets who predicted 
Him, among the apostles who testified of 
Him, there is none worthy to be compared or 
conjoined with Him. It is as if the heavens 
were swept bare of stars ; and suddenly, un- 
1 Pierre Loti, La Galilee (Paris, 1895), p. 93. 



'ess 



74 The Gospel of a Person 

expected, unaccompanied, the light of lights 
appears alone, in supreme isolation. 
Christ sin- Nor is there anything in His antecedents, 
in His surroundings, to explain His appear- 
ance and radiance. There was nothing in the 
soil of the sordid and narrow Jewish race 
to produce such an embodiment of pure and 
universal love.^ There was nothing in the 
atmosphere of that corrupt and sensual age 
to beget or foster such a character of stainless 
and complete virtue. Nor was His own life, 
— I say it reverently, — judged by purely hu- 
man and natural laws, calculated to result in 
such an evident perfection as all men have 
wonderingly recognized in Him. The high- 
est type of human piety, the excellence of a 
beautiful soul, has never been reached among 
men without repentance and self-abasement. 
But Jesus never repented, never abased Him- 
self in shame and sorrow before God, never 
asked for pardon and mercy. Alone, among 
His followers who kneel at His command to 
confess their unworthiness and implore for- 
giveness. He stands upright and lifts a cloud- 
less face to heaven in the inexplicable glory 

i Amory H. Bradford, Heredity and Christian Problems 
(New York, Macmillan, 1895), p. 266. 



The Gospel of a Person 76 

of piety Avitliout penitence. Moral perfection 
of this kind is not only without a parallel ; 
it is also without an approach. Men have 
never attained to it, and there is no way for 
them to climb thither. We can only look up 
to that perfection, serene, sinless, unsurpassable, 
and feel that here we are in sight of something 
which cannot be expressed except by saying 
that it is the glory of eternal spirit embodied 
in a person. 

IV 

But the force which resides in the person The gospel 
of Jesus is not exhausted in the production 
of this profound impression of its own spirit- 
ual and transcendent nature. It goes beyond 
this result of a vivid sense of the reality 
of the unseen. It has in itself a purifying, 
cleansing power, a delivering, uplifting, sanc- 
tifying power. The Gospel of Christ is the 
gospel of a person who saves men from sin. 
And herein it comes very close to the heart 
of a doubting age. 

The great and wonderful fact of this expe- 
rience, which can neither be questioned nor 
fully explained, is not involved in the theo- 
logical speculations which have gathered about 



76 The Gospel of a Person 

it. The person of Jesus stands out clear 
and simple as a powerful Saviour of sinful 
men and women. In His presence, the publi- 
can and the harlot felt their hearts dissolve 
with I know not what unutterable rapture 
of forgiveness. At His word, the heavy- 
laden were mysteriously loosed from the 
imponderable burden of past transgression. 
He suffered with sinners, and even while 
He suffered He delivered them from the 
sharpest of all pains, — the pain of conscious 
The power ^nd unpardoned evil. He died for sinners, 

of divist^s 

cross. according to His own word ; and ever since. 

His cross has been the sign of rescue for 
humanity. Whatever may be the nature 
of that sublime transaction upon Calvary ; 
whatever the name by which men call it, — 
Atonement, Sacrifice, Redemption, Propitia- 
tion ; whatever relations it may have to the 
eternal moral law and to the Divine right- 
eousness, — its relation to the human heart is 
luminous and beautiful. It does take away 
sin. Kneeling at that holy altar, the soul at 
once remembers most vividly, and confesses 
most humbly, and loses most entirely, all her 
guilt. A sense of profound, unutterable relief, 
a sacred quietude, diffuses itself through all 
the recesses of the troubled spirit. Looking 



The Gospel of a Person 77 

unto Christ crucified, we receive an assurance 
of sin forgiven, which goes deeper than thought 
can fathom, and far deeper than words can 
measure. 

" We may not know, we cannot tell 
What pains lie had to bear, 
But we believe it was for us 
He hung and suffered there. 

" He died that we might be forgiven, 
He died to make us good ; 
That we might go at last to heaven, 
Saved by His precious blood." 

This is not theory, this is not philosophy, 
this is not theology. It is veritable fact. The 
person Jesus, living with men, dying for men, 
has actually brought this gift of pardon for 
the past and hope for the future, into the heart 
of mankind. And from pure love of Him — a 
love which is first of all and most of all a sense 
of gratitude for this immeasurable service — 
have blossomed, often out of the very abysses of 
sin and degradation, the saintliest and sublimest 
lives that the world has ever seen. 

Now this, as I know from my own experience, 
is the gospel for doubting men, and for an age 
of doubt ; the gospel of a Person who is a fact 



78 The Crospel of a Person 

and a force, an evidence of the unseen, and a 
Saviour from sin. Can we preach it ? Will we 
preach it ? Then one thing is necessary for 
us, a thing which might not be necessary, 
perhaps, if our message were of another kind. 

All knowledge, of the world, of human na- 
ture, of books, will be helpful and tributary ; 
all gifts, of clear thought, of powerful speech, 
of prudent action, will be valuable and should 
be cultivated ; but one thing will be abso- 
lutely and forever indispensable. 
To know If ^e are to preach Christ we must know 

the one Christ, and know Him in such a sense that we 

thing need- can say with St. Paul that we are determined 
not to know anything save Jesus Christ and 
Him crucified. 1 We must study Him in the 
record of His life until His character is more 
real and vivid to us than that of brother or 
friend. We must imagine Him with ardent 
soul, until His figure glows before our inward 
sight, and His words sound in our ears as a 
living voice. We must love with His love, and 
sorrow with His grief, and rejoice with His joy, 
and offer ourselves with His sacrifice, so truly, 
so intensely that we can say, as St. Paul said, 
that we are crucified by His cross and risen in 
His resurrection. 2 We must trace the power 
1 1 Cor. ii. 2. 2 Gal. ii. 20. 



The Gospel of a Person 79 

of His life in the lives of our fellow-men, fol- 
lowing and realizing His triumphs in souls 
redeemed and sins forgiven, until we know 
the rapture that thrilled the breast of a St. 
Bernard, a St. Francis, a Thomas a Kempis, a 
Samuel Rutherford, a Robert McCheyne ; the 
chivalrous loyalty that animated a Henry Have- 
lock, a Charles Kingsley, a Frederick Robert- 
son, a Charles Gordon ; the deep devotion that 
strengthened a David Brainerd, a Henry Mar- 
tyn, a Coleridge Patteson. We must become 
the brothers of these men through brotherhood 
with Christ. \^q must kindle our hearts in 
communion with Him, by meditation, by prayer, 
and by service, which is the best kind of 
prayer. No day must pass in which we do not 
do something distinctly in Jesus' name, for 
Jesus' sake. We must go where He would go 
if He were on earth. We must try to do what 
He would do if He were still among men. 
And so, by our failure as well as by our effort, 
by the very contrast between our incomplete- 
ness and His perfection, the image of our Com- 
panion and our saving Lord will grow radiant 
and distinct within us. We shall know that 
potent attraction which His person has exer- 
cised upon the hearts of men, and feel in 
our breast that overmastering sense of loyalty 



80 The Gospel of a Person 

to Him, which alone can draw us to follow 
Him through life and death. 

"If Jesus Christ is a man, — 
And only a man, — I say 
That of all mankind I cleave to Him, 
And to Him will I cleave alway. 

"If Jesus Christ is a God, — 
And the only God, — I swear 
I will follow Him through heaven and hell, 
The earth, the sea, and the air."* 

1 Eichard "Watson Gilder, " Song of a Heathen, sojourning 
in Galilee, a.d. 32." 



m 

THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 



** He, who from the Father forth was sent, 
Came the true Light, light to our hearts to bring ; 
The Word of God, — the telling of His thought ; 
The Light of God, — the making visible; 
The far-transcending glory brought 
In human form with man to dwell ; 
The dazzling gone — the power not less 
To show, irradiate, and bless ; 
The gathering of the primal rays divine. 
Informing Chaos to a pure sunshine ! " 

— George MacDonald. 



Ill 

THE unat:ili]^g of the father 

In the famous fifteenth chapter of The Be- A sceptic's 
dine and Fall of the Roman Empire^ the author, ^^Tspread of 
who was but a superficial sceptic though a Christian- 
profound historian, introduces an account of 
the rise and spread of the Christian Religion. 
He attributes its remarkable triumph over the 
established religions of the earth to a series of 
causes which he ironically describes as sec- 
ondary, and uniformly treats as primary. He 
exhibits them as in themselves sufficient to 
explain the peculiarly favourable reception of 
the Christian faith in the world, and sets aside 
the question of a possible divine origin as 
unnecessary. With serene self-satisfaction he 
traces the rapid growth of the Christian Church 
to the five following causes : I. The Zeal of 
the Christians^ derived from the Jews, — but 
purified from that narrow and unsocial spirit 
which, instead of inviting, had deterred tlie 
Gentiles from embracing the law of Moses. 

83 



84 



The Unveiling of the Father 



The shallow- 
ness of this 
view. 



II. The Doctrine of a Future Life, improved 
by every additional circumstance which could 
give weight and efficacy to that important 
truth. III. The Miraculous Powers ascribed 
to the primitive Church. IV. The Pure and 
Austere Morals of the Christians. V. The 
Union and Discipline of the Christian Republic, 
which gradually formed an increasing and in- 
dependent state in the heart of the Roman 
empire.^ 

Now this is a very fair, we may even say a 
brilliant, example of the kind of work which 
was done by the shallow and complacent scep- 
ticism of a century ago. But the moment we 
subject it to the more searching analysis of the 
scepticism of the present age, it dissolves into 
a thin and incoherent absurdity. For it is 
evident that, so far from giving an explanation 
of the growth of Christianity, Gibbon is simply 
describing some of the phenomena which ac- 
companied that growth. What, for example, 
is " the zeal of the Christians " but an unillu- 
minating name for a contagious and irresistible 
enthusiasm which spread through the world 
in connection with faith in Christ ? What is 



1 Edward Gibbon, Esq., A History of the Decline and 
Fall of the Boman Empire (London, John Murray, 8th 
Edition, 1854), vol. ii., p. 152. 



The Unveiling of the Father 85 

" the union and discipline of tlie Christian re- 
public " but a description, without explanation, 
of the organic unfolding of a new, myste- 
rious principle of fellowship. These alleged 
" causes," more closely examined, are in fact 
the very things that require to be accounted 
for. Instead of clearing up the mystery, they 
increase it. 

By a singular fatality of language, the seep- The"px- 
tical historian has embodied in the statement ^^g^^^ ^^ ^^ 
of his position the demonstration of its insuf- explained. 
ficiency. In each of his causes, and in the 
relation that subsists betAveen them, he has 
practically suggested a difficulty which de- 
mands another and a higher solution of the 
whole problem. Examine his words carefully. 

By what means, human or divine, was the Questions 
zeal of the Christians ' purified from the narrow „^^^^ ^^^ 
and unsocial spirit of the Jews ' ? The natural answer. 
history of sects and schisms teaches us that 
their invariable tendency is to intensify rather 
than to eliminate bigotry and exclusiveness. 
Through what influence was the doctrine of a 
future life 'improved by every additional cir- 
cumstance that could give it weight and effi- 
cacy ' ? The inevitable course of its human 
development under the guidance of abstract 
philosophy has been towards vagueness, cold- 



86 The Unveiling of the Father 

ness, and uncertainty; under the guidance of 
concrete superstition, towards puerility and 
crass sensualism. On what grounds were mir- 
aculous powers ascribed to the early Church ? 
They must have been ascribed truly or falsely. 
If truly, there must have been some basis of 
fact for them to rest upon. If falsely, the 
Christians themselves were either ignorant, 
or cognizant, of the falsehood. Take the 
former supposition, and you present yourself 
with the inexplicable theory that what Pliny 
the Younger called superstitio prava immodica, 
and imagined Avould be easily and certainly ex- 
tirpated, was able to hold its own against all 
the assaults of learning and philosophy. Take 
the latter supposition, and you are forced to the 
incredible assumption that a conscious decep- 
tion was the fountain of highest and strongest 
moral force that the world has ever felt.^ 
How then did the " pure and austere morals of 
the Christians " come into existence ? From a 
lie, or from a truth? If from a truth, what 
was the nature of that truth, in what form was 
it expressed, and how did it win credence ? 

1 Carlyle, Heroes and Hero-Worship^ sect. ii. : "A false 
man found a religion ? Why, a false man cannot even build 
a brick house ! If he do not know and follow truly the 
properties of mortar, burnt clay, and what else he works in, 
it is no house that he makes, but a rubbish heap. ' ' 



The Unveiling of the Father 87 

And, finally, how did '' the Christian republic " 
succeed in maintaining and increasing itself as 
an independent state in the heart of the Roman 
empire ? Every other attempt to do this par- 
ticular thing, by secret philosophic doctrine, or 
by open political organization, failed, and Avas 
violently crushed by im^^erial power, or silently 
dissolved and absorbed by imperial statesman- 
ship. How was it that this one invisible fel- 
lowship, this one visible organization, lived, 
and spread, and stood out at last, serene, com- 
plete, and magnificent, when the time-worn 
ruins of the empire crumbled around it ? 

The answer to these questions is found in the The answer 
person of Christ. This is not a matter of choice. *^ G^^^st. 
It is a matter of necessity. For if He was, as 
all candid observers will admit, the originator 
and animator of Christianity, then to stop short 
of Him in our inquiry as to the causes of its 
existence and progress is to stop half-way, as 
if one should account for the flow of the Nile, 
after the fashion of the ancient geographers, by 
attributing it to the melting of the snows on 
the Mountains of the i\Ioon, instead of tracing 
it to its great fountain in the Albert Nyanza. 

Christ stands above and behind the Church, 
and all these secondary causes which have been 



88 The Unveiling of the Father 

Christ, the enumerated to account for her growth and 

creator of n p tt* 

Christian- power flow directly from Him. He it was who 
*^y- purified and humanized the zeal of Christians, 

so that they emerged from the narrowest of 
races to preach the broadest and most universal 
of all religions. He it was who cleared and 
enlarged their view of immortality, so that it 
became at once important and efficacious, the 
only doctrine of a future life that has exercised 
a direct and uplifting influence upon the pres- 
ent life. He it was who endowed the Church 
with whatever powers she possessed. He it was 
who cleansed and ennobled her moral ideals and 
gave her the only pattern and rule of virtue 
which has been universally acknowledged as 
self -consistent, satisfactory, and supreme. He 
it was who cemented her union and strength- 
ened her discipline to such an indestructible sol- 
idarity, that the tie which bound the individual 
soul to Him was regarded as superior to all 
earthly relations, and the fellowship which that 
common tie created, surpassed and survived all 
fellowships of race, of culture, of nationality. 

These are simple historical facts. In stating 
them we make no assumptions and propound 
no theories. It is not necessary to take any- 
thing for granted or to adopt any particular 
theological or philosophical system, in order to 



The Unveiling of tlte Father 89 

see clearly and beyond the possibility of mis- 
take that all the force and influence of Chris- 
tianity in the world have, as a matter of fact, 
flowed directly from Jesus Christ and from the 
faith which He has inspired in the hearts of men. 

The one question of supreme importance, Who, then, 
then, if we would understand what Christian- 
ity really means, is. Who is this person who 
stands at the centre of it and fills it with life 
and strength? What did the first Christians 
see in Him that made them believe in Him so 
absolutely and implicitly and gave them power 
to do such mighty works? What has the 
church seen in Him through the ages that has 
bound her to Him as her living Lord and Mas- 
ter ? And what are we to see in Him if He is 
to be in deed and in truth the theme of our 
gospel? What thirik ye of Christ? 

This question, you see, is vital and inevitable. Theirtevi- 
If we are to have a Christianity which is real ^^^^ 
and historical, we must get into line with his- 
tory. If we are to have behind us the power 
which comes from actual achievements of our 
gospel in the world, we must understand the 
relation which it has always held to the person 
of Christ. If we are to be in any sense the 
followers of the first Christians, and to share the 
joy and peace and power of their religion, we 



90 



The Unveiling of the Father 



The historic 
answer. 



must take tlie view which they took, of Jesus 
of Nazareth. 

Now, the object of this lecture may be stated 
in a single sentence. It is to show that the 
first Christians saw, and that the Church has 
always seen, in Jesus Christ a real incarnation 
of God ; a true and personal unveiling of the 
Father ; God in Christ, reconciling the world 
unto Himself. In other words, not only must 
we find in Jesus Christ the centre of Christian- 
ity, but we must also behold an actual divinity 
as the centre of life in Jesus Christ. 



Christ's 
Godhood 
slowly re- 
vealed. 



We are not to suppose that faith in Christ 
began with a clear and definite conception of 
His divinity. On the contrary, it is evident 
from the whole gospel record that the idea that 
Christ was divine gradually developed and un- 
folded in the minds of those who knew and 
loved and trusted Him. The idea of an incar- 
nation was foreign to the Hebrew mind. There 
was no race in the world that held so strongly 
to the thought that God was solitary, unsearch- 
able, and incommunicable. They believed that 
even His true name could not be pronounced 
by human lips, and that it was impossible for 



The Unveiling of the Father 91 

human eyes really to behold His glory. And 
the very strength of this ancestral faith of 
theirs, standing as it must have done directly 
in the way of belief in an incarnation, is an evi- 
dence of the tremendous power and unquestion- 
able reality of the experience which forced the 
disciples, by slow degrees, to believe firmly and 
unhesitatingly in the divinity of Christ. 

The process by which this result was accom- The gradual 
plished lies open to our thought in the New ^^^<;«««^/ 
Testament. We must go back to the point in- 
dicated in the second lecture. It was the im- 
pression made upon the disciples by Christ's 
own manifestation of Himself, His character, 
His actions, and His words, evidently consistent 
and unique, which led them at last to see in 
Him the object of divine faith and worship. 
He was not a mere man. That was evident and 
undeniable. He was higher than men ; holier 
than men ; He possessed an excellence and a 
power which made them feel in His presence 
that He was more than they were. What then 
was He ? There were but two directions in 
which their faith could move. The alternative 
was sharply set before the disciples on that 
memorable day at Csesarea Philippi, when Christ 
asked them first, "Whom do men say that I, the 
Son of man, am ? " and then, " But whom say ye 



92 



The Unveiling of the Father 



The new 

line of Chris- 
tian belief. 



What it 
meant to be 
the Christ. 



that I am ? " There were but two lines open to 
them. One was the line of popular superstition, 
which led them back into the past to see in 
Christ only the ghost of John the Baptist, or 
Elias, or one of the prophets come to life again. 
The other was the new line of Christian faith 
which led them forward to see in Jesus "the 
Christ, the Son of the living God." ^ 

New ? Of course it was new ! It had to be 
new, in order to fit the facts, which were such 
as had never been seen before. And just be- 
cause it was so new it had to unfold itself by 
degrees to the fulness of conscious apprehension 
of all that it involved. 

It is evident that the disciples did not know 
at first what was meant by the Christhood, 
the Messiahship, the fulfilment of all ancient 
prophecy and sacred ritual in Jesus. But they 
learned the lesson as they kept company with 
Him. They heard Him speak with an author- 
ity which none of the prophets had ever claimed. 
Recognizing a divine inspiration in the Old 
Testament Scriptures, He distinctly set Him- 
self above them as the bringer of a new and 
better revelation. He accomplished, interpreted, 
and revised them. " Ye have heard how it hath 
been said by them of old time " — by whom ? 
1 St. Matt. xvi. 13-16. 



The Unveiling of the Father 93 

By the lawgivers and prophets and psalmists 
whom Christ recognized as His own forerun- 
ners and foretellers. " But I say unto you, 
love your enemies, bless them that curse you, 
and pray for them that despitefully use you." ^ 

Suppose that this were all ; suppose that the Anew power 

to vevecil 

Sermon on the Mount were the whole of the truth. 
New Testament, what should we behold in it ? 
Not merely the amazing revelation of a morality 
more pure and perfect than any other the human 
heart has conceived, proceeding from the lips 
of an unlearned Nazarene peasant of the first 
century, but the absolutely overwhelming sight 
of a believing Hebrew placing Himself above 
the rule of His own faith, a humble teacher 
asserting supreme authority over all human 
conduct, a moral reformer discarding all other 
foundations, and saying, " Every one that hear- 
eth these sayings of mine and doeth them, I 
will liken him unto a wise man which built his 
house upon a rock."^ Nine and forty times, in 
the brief and fragmentary record of the dis- 
courses of Jesus, recurs this solemn phrase 
with which He authenticates the truth : Verily., 
I say unto you. And every time that the dis- 
ciples heard it they must have gotten a new 
idea of what it meant to be the Christ. 

1 St. Matt. V. 43, 44. 2 st. Matt. vii. 24. 



94 The Unveiling of the Father 

A new Think also of the significance which the 

humanitv favourite Messianic title used by Jesus to de- 
scribe Himself must have had to their minds. 
He called Himself "the Son of man."^ Why? 
Was it because He was merely human ? If 
that was all, surely it would not need to 
be asserted and emphasized again and again. 
Imagine any other man, the highest and the 
holiest, insisting upon the reality of his human 
life, dwelling upon it, repeating the assertion 
of it over and over. But this title was, in fact, 
the claim to a peculiar and supreme relation to 
the human race. Christ was not a son of man, 
but the Son of man, one who, in the luminous 
words of Irenseus, reeapitulavit in se ipso longam 
hominum expositionem.^ And as such He as- 
sumed on earth and in His prevision of heaven 
a position which no mere man could rightly 
take. " The Son of man hath power on earth 
to forgive sins."^ "The Son of man is Lord 
also of the Sabbath." * "When the Son of 
man shall come in His glory, and all the holy 

1 In St. Matthew, 30 times ; in St. Luke, 25 times ; in 
St. Mark, 14 times. 

2 Irenseus, Adv. Hcer., iii. 18. 1 : "He summed up in 
himself the long unfolding of humanity." The Syriac ver- 
sion of this passage is equally beautiful and significant: 
" He commenced afresh the long line of men." 

3 St. Matt. ix. 6. * St. Mark ii. 28. 



Tlie Unveiling of the Father 95 

angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the 
throne of His glory ; and before Him shall be 
gathered all nations, and He shall separate 
them one from another, as a shepherd divideth 
the sheep from the goats." ^ 

Consider what this implied. It was a decla- ^ supreme 
ration that Jesus expected, and was willing, to -^^^ ^^^g 
take into His own hands the task of discrimi- y^orid, 
nating between the good and the bad in the 
unsearchable confusions and complexities of 
the human heart, and of determining, without 
hesitation, without misgiving, without redress, 
the final destinies of the untold myriads of 
men ; " an office," it has been well said, " in- 
volving such spiritual insight, such discern- 
ment of the thoughts and intents of the heart 
of each one of the millions at His feet, such 
awful, unshared supremacy in the moral world, 
that the imagination recoils in sheer agony 
from the task of seriously contemplating the 
assumption of these duties by any created in- 
telligence." ^ When the disciples heard their 
Master declare that He would fulfil this office 
of Judge of the World, they must have begun 
to feel what it meant to be the Christ. 

1 St. Matt. XXV. 31, 32. 

2 H. P. Liddon, The Divinity of Our Lord (London, 
1886), p. 176. 



96 The Unveiling of the Father 

What it ]s^or do I suppose that they realized at first 

7YlGCl7lt to l)& 

the Son of ^^^^ Ml intention of that second phrase in 
God. which their view of Jesus was expressed. The 

Son of the living Qod^ — that also was an idea 
to be gradually apprehended and unfolded. 
And think what light must have fallen upon 
it from the conduct of Jesus as they followed 
Him from day to day. The more closely they 
knew Him, the more deeply they felt His sin- 
less purity and sovereign virtue. There was a 
certainty, an independence, a freedom from all 
effort and from all restraint in His goodness, 
such as no other good man has ever shown. 
He had the deepest knowledge of the evil of 
sin, yet no shadow or stain of it fell upon His 
own soul. He was on terms of closest inti- 
macy — an intimacy such as no saint ever 
dared to assume — with God. He conversed 
with the Father in a friendship which was 
utterly without fear or regret or misgiving. 
Chrisfs own Now when the disciples saw this, it must have 
put them upon deep thoughts, and the guidance 
to these thoughts was given by Christ's own 
words about Himself. He put Himself side by 
side with the Divine activity. " My Father 
worketh hitherto and I work."^ The Jews 
who heard Him say this, sought to kill Him, 
1 St. John V. 17. 



The Unveiling of the Father 97 

because He had not only broken the Sabbath, 
but said also that God was His Father, making 
Himself equal with God. And if the Jews 
thought this, what did His own disciples think ? 
He claimed a Divine origin and mission : " I 
came forth from the Father ; " ^ " My Father 
sent me. " ^ He claimed a Divine knowledge and 
fellowship : " No man knoweth the Father save 
the Son;"^ "O righteous Father, the world 
hath not known Thee, but I have known 
Thee."^ He claimed to unveil the Father's 
being in Himself : " He that hath seen me hath 
seen the Father. I am in the Father and the 
Father in me."^ 

To AA^hat conclusion must such conduct and The 
such words as these lead the disciples in their conclusion. 
interpretation of the true meaning of the title 
" the Son of God " ? A conclusion which Jesus 
Himself, if He was as wise and good as all men 
admit, must inevitably have foreseen. A con- 
clusion which He Himself, if He had been only 
a holy man, better than His disciples but of 
the same nature, would certainly have guarded 
against and prevented at any cost. A con- 
clusion which is expressed in the attitude of 

1 St. John xvi. 28. 3 st. Matt. xi. 27. 

2 St. John xii. 49. * St. John xvii. 25. 

5 St. John xiv. 9, 11. 

H 



98 The Unveiling of the Father 

Thomas, kneeling at the feet of Christ and 
crying, ''My Lord and my God.''^ A conclu- 
sion which is finally and definitively embodied 
in the action of the apostles going out into the 
world to disciple all nations, and to baptize 
them " into the name of the Father, and of the 
Son, and of the Holy Ghost." ^ 

n 

The disci- There cannot be any question as to the state 

pies believed • a \.- \. ^-^ ' 4-- • t ^ tj- ^i. 

that Christ ^^ mind which this action implied, it was the 
was Divine, deep conviction, not necessarily reasoned out 
and formulated, but lying at the very root of 
conduct, that Jesus Christ the Son was the un- 
veiling of His Father God, and that the Holy 
Spirit who came upon the disciples was the 
Spirit of the Father and the Son. The part 
which the resurrection played in the clarifying 
and confirming of this conviction was impor- 
tant. But we must not misunderstand the 
meaning of the resurrection. It was not in 
any sense a new and different revelation of 
God, imagined or actually received. Whatever 
the form in which Jesus appeared to the dis- 
ciples during the forty days that followed His 
death, He was recognized as the same Jesus ; 
and the one effect of His appearance was 
1 St. John XX. 28. 2 gt. Matt, xxviii. 19. 



The Unveiling of the Father 99 

simply to confirm and deepen the truth of what 
He had said and done while He was with them. 
And with this confirmation the truth took shape 
and substance as an active and enduring power 
in human faith and life and worship. 

There is no more room for doubt that the 
early Christians saw in Christ a personal un- 
veiling of God, than that the friends and fol- 
lowers of Abraham Lincoln regarded him as a 
good and loyal American citizen of the white 
race. And even if we could find no direct and 
definite statement of either of these views, the 
evidence that men held them could be clearly 
and certainly read in the facts of history. 

Divine honours were paid to Christ in the ^^e early 
primitive Church. The first common prayer ^oorsUpped 
of the disciples, when they were assembled to Chnst. 
choose an apostle in the place of the traitor 
Judas, was addressed to Christ.^ The Chris- 
tians were distinguished both from the Jews 
and from the heathen as those who called upon 
the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. ^ The dying 
martyr Stephen showed what was meant by this 
phrase in his prayer, " Lord Jesus, receive my 
spirit."^ Saul of Tarsus, when he was con- 

1 Acts i. 24. See Alford in loc. 

2 Acts ix. 21 ; 1 Cor. i. 2. 

3 Acts vii. 59. 



100 The Unveiling of the Father 

vinced by that strange experience on the road 
to Damascus that Jesus was not an impostor, 
but the Christ, at once addressed Him in 
prayer, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to 
do?"^ And Ananias, who received Saul into 
the Church, asked guidance and direction from 
the same Lord.^ Peter baptized the multi- 
tudes on the day of Pentecost in the name of 
Jesus Christ.^ John wrote of prayer to the 
Son of God as a familiar ground of confidence 
in Christian experience.* The apostolic bene- 
diction was : " The grace of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, and the love of God, and the communion 
of the Holy Ghost be with you all."^ The 
whole current of adoration and devotion in the 
New Testament leads up naturally and without 
surprise to the magnificent words of St. Paul, 
in which he speaks of " Christ, who is over all, 
God blessed forever."^ 

It should be frankly recognized that the first 
Christians assigned a certain subordination to 
the Son in relation to the Father ; but it must 
be admitted with equal candour that this sub- 
ordination was not in any sense a separation, 

1 Acts ix. 6. 2 Acts ix. 13. » Acts ii. 38. 

4 I John V. 13-15. 5 2 Cor. xiii. 14. 

6 Rom. ix. 5. Cf. Stevens, The Fauline Theology, p. 201, 
for a succinct statement of the grounds on which this inter- 
pretation of the text is preferred. 



The Unveiling of the Father 101 

and that it really implied and involved a unity 
between them which made it possible and nat- 
ural and inevitable for the disciples to pay an 
adoration to the Son with the Father, which, if 
it had been offered to, or claimed by, the great- 
est and best of the apostles, would have been 
instantly repudiated by the whole Church as 
not only absurd but radically blasphemous. 

It is an easy matter to trace the worship of 
Christ in the later development of Christianity. 
There are two sources of evidence : the Chris- 
tian hymns and liturgies ; the heathen attacks 
and the apologies which they evoked. 

The earliest hymns of the Greek Church, the The testi- 
" Thanksgiving at lamplight ing," " Shepherd of hyj^ns. 
tender youth," " The Bridegroom cometh," the 
^' Hymn to Christ after Silence," celebrate the 
praise of the Lord Jesus. Syriac poetry, through 
its great poet, Ephrem Syrus, takes up the same 
strain of adoration to the Son of God, and its 
undying music may still be heard among the 
mountains of Armenia where the unspeakable 
Turk is exterminating a whole race for loyalty 
to the name of Christ. Latin hymnody, from 
its earliest origin in translations from the Greek 
like the Gloria in Excelsis and the Te Deum^ 
through its splendid unfolding in the poetry 
of Hilary of Poictiers, Ambrose of Milan, and 



102 The Unveiling of the Father 

Gregory the Great, to its sweet culmination in 
the two Bernards, him of Clairvaux and him of 
Cluny, repeats the same burden : 

" O Jesus, Thou the glory art 
Of angel worlds above ; 
Thy name is music to my heart, 
Enchanting it with love." 

In every land and language, in German, in 
French, in English, the most precious and 
potent melodies of the Church are fragrant with 
the name of Christ. 
The testi- The early liturgies bear the same testimony 

early litur- ^^ ^^® pre-eminence of the Lord Jesus in the 
s^ies. doxologies and supplications of Christian faith. 

The Apostolical Constitutions,^ the liturgy of 
St. James,^ the liturgy of St. Mark,^ the liturgy 
of St. Adseus and St. Maris,* unquestionably 
preserve the spirit of the early Christian wor- 
ship ; and they all are witnesses to the fact that 
the Christians prayed directly to Christ. In- 
deed, it lies upon the very surface of history 
that the growth of Christianity, as manifested 

1 Apost. Const. , Book VIII., chap. vii. 

2 The Divine Liturgy of St. James, iii. : " Sovereign 
Lord Jesus Christ, Word of God," etc. 

3 The Divine Liturgy of the Holy Apostle and Evangelist 
Mark, v., xxii., etc. 

* Liturgy of the Blessed Apostles, composed by St. Adceus 
and St. Maris, xiv. 



The Unveiling of the Father 103 

in a spreading worship, was not simply the in- 
crease of those who were willing to adore God 
on the authority of Christ. It was distinctly 
and essentially the diffusion of an inward force 
which impelled men to blend the name of Christ 
with the name of God in their prayers, and to 
worship the Son with the Father. The beauti- 
ful Prayer of St. Chrysostom, which closes the 
Litany and the Morning and Evening Prayers 
of the Protestant Episcopal Church, is addressed 
to Christ, " who dost promise that when two or 
three are gathered together in Thy name. Thou 
wilt grant their requests."^ There is not in 
the world to-day a single great liturgy, Greek, 
Roman, Armenian, French, German, Scotch, or 
English, which does not contain ascriptions of 
divine glory, and petitions for divine grace, 
addressed to Jesus Christ. 

Heathen writers of very early date assure us Th^ iesH- 
that this was the practice of Christians from hQaOien. 
the beginning. The younger Pliny reported 
to the Emperor Trajan that the people called 
Christians were accustomed to assemble before 
daybreak and " sing a hjrmn of praise respon- 
sively to Christ, as it were to God."^ In the 

1 St. Matt, xviii. 20. 

2 A.D. 112, See the chapter on "Pliny's Report and 
Trajan's Rescript " in Ramsay, The Church in the Boman 
Empire (New York, Putnam, 1893), pp. 196 ff. 



104 The Unveiling of the Father 

public trials that followed there was never anj 
denial of this statement. It was admitted alike 
by those who apostatized under the pressure of 
persecution and by those who remained faithful 
to the name of Christ. The Emperor Hadrian 
wrote to Servian that of the population of Alex- 
andria "some worshipped Serapis, and others 
Christ." Lucian, the pagan satirist, says in 
his biography of Peregrinus Proteus : " The 
Christians are still worshipping that great man 
who was crucified in Palestine."^ 
Christians In all the apologics for the Christian religion 

despised for ^ • ^ .fiii- ii 

worshipping which were put lorth during the persecutions 
Christ. under Hadrian, and his successors Antoninus 

Pius and Marcus Aurelius, there was no at- 
tempt to refute the universal charge that the 
Christians worshipped Christ. ^ As if to con- 
firm this evidence by one of those indications 
which are all the more significant because they 
are so slight and so clearly unpremeditated, 
there still exists a rude caricature, scratched 
by some careless hand upon the walls of the 

1 Luciani Samosatensis Opera. (Ed. Leipsic, 1829) , Tomus 
iv., p. 173. 

2 The First Apology of Justin Martyr, chap. xiii. : "Our 
teacher of these things is Jesus Christ ; and that we reason- 
ably worship Him, having learned that He is the Son of the 
true God Himself, and holding Him in the second place, and 
the prophetic Spirit in the third, we will prove." 



The Unveiling of the Father 105 

Palatine Palace in Rome not later than the 
beginning of the third century, representing a 
human ligure with an ass's head hanging upon 
a cross, -while a man stands before it in the 
attitude of worship. Underneath is this ill- 
spelled inscription, — 

" Alexamenos adore his God." ^ 

Thus the songs and prayers of believers, the 
accusations of persecutors, the sneers of seep 
tics, and the coarse jests of mockers all join 
in proving beyond a doubt that the primitive 
Christians paid divine honour to the Lord 
Jesus. I do not see how any man can be in 
touch with Christianity as a living form of 
worship in the world, unless he knows the 
reality and appreciates the force of this un- 
questionable fact. 

m 

Nor will it be possible to understand the Christ loas 

€L 7Z6Z0 

intellectual and moral teachings of the Chris- theology. 
tian religion, as they are recorded in the New 
Testament, unless we put ourselves at the focal 
point from which, as a matter of history, these 
teachings were first conceived and then un- 

1 Das Spott- Crucifix der Bomischen Kaiser Paldste, Fer- 
dinand Becker (Gera, 1876). Das Spott- Crucifix vom Pala- 
tini Franz Xaver Kraus (Freiburg, 1872). 



106 The Unveiling of the Father 

folded. Tnis point was the vision of an un- 
veiling of the being and mind of God in 
Christ. It was not merely that JesQS said 
certain things about God which men had not 
known, or had forgotten. It was that they 
saw in the coming of Christ a personal revela- 
tion of the Divine Being. And this revelation 
touched and transformed every possible sphere 
of thought and feeling in regard to the prob- 
lems of religion. The personality of God was 
made distinct and luminous, not only by the 
recognition of an eternal Fatherhood in His 
nature, but by the light of the knowledge of 
His glory shining in the face of a person.^ 
The righteousness of God was disclosed in a 
new aspect by the thought that He had sent 
His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and 
for sin to condemn sin in the flesh.^ The good- 
ness of God was confirmed and made sufficient 
for all possible human needs by the conviction 
that He who spared not His own Son, but freely 
delivered Him up for us all, would also with 
Him freely give us all things.^ The saving 
will and power of God were apprehejided 
through the vision of Him in Christ reconcil- 
ing the world to Himself.* The everlasting 

1 2 Cor. iv. 6. 2 Rom. viii. 3. 

« Rom. viii. 32. * 2 Cor. v. 19. 



Tlie Unveiling of the Father 107 

and inseparable love of God became the sure 
ground of hope only when it was seen em- 
bodied in Christ Jesus our Lord.^ The true 
meaning of filial obedience to God and of 
union with God was interpreted in the light 
of conformity to the image of His Son.^ And 
the immense significance of immortality was 
comprehended in the possession of a life hid 
with Christ in God.^ 

Now the window through which men caught (^od was 
sight of these truths was, and could have been, (jj^^st. 
nothing else than faith in a real incarnation 
of God in Christ. The personal, moral, sym- 
pathetic view of God which distinguished the 
early Church was seen only through that open- 
ing.* She saw the Divine Being beaming with 
a new radiance, she saw the wide landscape of 
human duty and destiny illuminated and trans- 
figured, she saw a new heaven and a new earth, 
when she saw in Christ all the fulness of the 
Godhead dwelling bodily. And it was in the 

1 Eom. viii. 39. 2 Rom. viii. 29. ^ Col. iii. 3. 

* First Epistle of St. Clement.^ chap, xxxvi. : "By Him 
we look up to the heights of heaven. By Him we behold, 
as in a glass, His immaculate and most excellent visage. By 
Him are the eyes of our heart opened. By Him our foolish 
and darkened understanding blossoms up anew towards the 
light." Bp. Lightfoot's Edition. (Macmillan, 1890.) 



108 The Unveiling of the Father 

strength and enthusiasm of this vision, that she 
concentrated all her moral and intellectual en- 
ergies on the one point of keeping that window 
open, and maintaining against direct assault 
and secret dissolution the real and personal 
Deity of Christ. 

IV 

Christian \ am careful to put the statement in this 

grew around ^o^m because I believe that it alone corresponds 
the Deity of with the facts, and because it is only by get- 
ting our minds into this position that we can 
hope to understand the course, the meaning, 
and the force of Christian doctrine. The early 
Christians looked at God through Christ : they 
did not look at Christ through a preconceived 
idea and a logical definition of God. The true 
development of theology, to put the matter 
plainly, was not abstract, it was personal 
and practical. The doctrine of the Trinity 
came into being to meet an imperious neces- 
sity. That necessity was the defence of the 
actual worship of Christ, the actual trust in 
Christ as the Unveiler of the Father, which 
already existed at the heart of Christianity. 
It was recognized instinctively that the loss 
of this trust, the silencing of this worship, 



Tlie Unveiling of the Father 109 

meant the death of Christianity by heart-fail- 
ure. Every speculation which threatened this 
result, every theory of human nature or of 
divine nature which seemed to separate the 
personality of Christ from the personality of 
God, was regarded by the Church as dangerous 
and hostile. Every attempted statement of 
theological dogma which appeared to obscure 
or to imperil the reality and the eternal valid- 
ity of the unveiling of the Father in the Son, 
was resented, and a counter statement of theo- 
logical dogma was framed to meet it. This 
was the intellectual conflict of Christianity in 
the first centuries : a struggle for life centring 
about the actual Deity of Christ. 

As we trace the progress of this conflict, ^^^ conflict 

.,.,,., T with heresy, 

its vital importance emerges more and more 
clearly. Often, I suppose, we cannot help feel- 
ing a sense of sympathy with the earnest pur- 
pose and the personal character of those men 
who were called heretics. Often we are con- 
scious of a certain distrust for the meta- 
physical and exegetical arguments, and of a 
grave repugnance for the physical and politi- 
cal methods, which were used by the orthodox 
to enforce their definitions. Athanasius was 
not an altogether lovely person. Some of the 
early Church Councils were almost as disor- 



110 



The Unveiling of the Father 



The Palla- 
dium of 
Christian- 
ity. 



derly and reckless as some of the regiments that 
have fouglit in various wars to defend the cause 
of human liberty and justice. But the question 
is not one of the manner of defence or attack. 
It is a question of the reality and significance of 
the cause attacked and defended. And here we 
see that Athanasius with all his faults was on 
the right side, and Arius with all his virtues 
was on the wrong side. Through all the con- 
fusion of metaphysical dispute about the exact 
meaning of substance and subsistence, nature 
and personality, ideal existence and real exist- 
ence, — terms which, as I conceive them, must 
change their significance as the methods of 
human philosophy change, and must always 
represent imperfectly a mystery which is for 
us unsearchable and indefinable, — through all 
this confusion one fact shines out clear and dis- 
tinct. The unveiling of the Father in Christ 
was, and continued to be, and still is, the 
Palladium of Christianity. All who have sur- 
rendered it, for whatever reason, have been 
dispersed and scattered. All who have de- 
fended it, in whatever method, have been held 
fast in the unity of the faith and of the know- 
ledge of the Son of God.^ 



1 Eph. iv. 13. 



The Unveiling of the Father 111 

This point of view must condition the atti- ^'^« ^^'^- 

, „ . , 111- CI trine o/ the 

tucie 01 our mnuls towards the doctrine or the THnity coiv^ 
Trinity. No Christian man can be hostile or structedto 

. , . ^ • T 1 1 ' ^ ' defend the 

indmerent to it when he remembers its history. j)giiy ^j 
It may have been too much elaborated by minds <^^^^«^- 
over-curious in metaphysical distinctions. It 
may have been put in a position of undue pre- 
eminence by theologians whose energies were 
all absorbed in its construction and in the con- 
templation of the work of their own reason in 
the service of Christianity. But in spite of all 
excesses and errors, it stands as an enduring 
monument of the loyalty of the faith to its cen- 
tral conviction. In all its forms, from the 
sharply tri-personal Trinity of Athanasius, to 
the essentially tri-modal Trinity of Augustine, 
the great service which it has rendered is not 
abstract nor philosophical. It is practical. 
It has protected the conviction that the real 
nature of God is revealed in Christ ; it has jus- 
tified the consciousness that the Spirit of Christ, 
animating the Christian life, is the Spirit of 
God ; it has preserved the sense of real com- 
munion with God in Christ which is the nerve 
of Christian worship. 

And yet the doctrine of the Trinity is not the 
gospel, nor is it the foundation of the gospel. 
It cannot be preached as a saving message to the 



112 The Unveiling of the Father 

The doc- souls of men, except in that form in which we find 
Trinit ^ ^^ ^^^ Phillips Brooks' noble Sermon for Trinity 
subordinate Sunday^ and Dr. George A. Gordon's powerful 
vel ^ ^^^' discourse on The Trinity the Ground of Humanity. 
It is the effort to apprehend a relation of the 
Being of God to the conscious experience of 
man ; a truth exhibited in the course of revela- 
tion and recognized in its mysterious unfolding 
both before and after all efforts to symbolize 
it in theological language ; in brief, it is the 
reaching out of the human mind, conscious of 
its limitations and conditions, towards a vision 
and worship of the Father in the Son through 
the Spirit. The doctrine of the Trinity is not 
the Palladium. It is the defence. I will con- 
fess that in its broad outlines it seems to me 
necessary and satisfactory. I will confess that 
no other answer to the profound questions 
which inevitably arise out of the contact be- 
tween the idea of God, and the experience of 
real life in all its manifoldness, appears to me 
half so reasonable or complete as that which 
asserts that " the various fundamental forms of 
society on the earth, the essential relationships 
of humanity, have their Archetype, their Eter- 
nal Pattern and Causal Source, in the nature of 
the Infinite." 1 I will confess that the form of 
1 Gordon, The Christ of To-day, p. 101. 



The Unveiling of the Father 113 

this answer which conteiiiphites the existence 
of these eternal reLationships in the Divine 
nature as most clearly and positively personal, 
is more conclusive to my mind than any other. 
But if other men think otherwise on this point, 
we are not therefore divided from each other, 
or from the Christian faith. The question is 
one of metaphysics. It is not a question of re- 
ligion. All modes of defining the Trinity as a 
doctrine must be kept subordinate to the pur- 
pose for which it exists. All attempts to ex- 
press it are valuable only in so far as they help 
us to keep in view the unveiling of the Divine 
nature which centres in Him who was mani- 
fested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen 
of angels, preached among the nations, believed 
on in the world, received up in glory.^ 



Now wherein is a message like this, the gos- The gospel 
pel of a personal unveiling of God in the per- ^^^^ 

^ ^ ^ ^ Incarnation 

son of Christ, adapted to the needs of the adapted to 
present age? ' is age. 

1. It seems to me first of all that the course 
of modern thought has prepared the way for it 
by destroying the a priori objections to the In- 
1 1 Tim. iii. 16. 

X 



114 The Unveiling of the Father 

Philosophy carnation. Shallow agnosticism makes two as- 

has cleared , i • i 

the way for sumptions wliich are contradictory. It assumes 
»"'• that man is unable to attain to the knowledge 

of God ; and that it is impossible for God to 
reveal Himself to man. But if we cannot 
know Him, how can we know that He cannot 
reveal Himself? This would be in effect the 
most intimate kind of knowledge. To take it 
for granted that an Incarnation of God is im- 
possible or incredible is to profess a most per- 
fect and exclusive understanding of the Divine 
nature. "At one time," says Mr. Romanes, 
" it seemed to me impossible that any proposi- 
tion, verbally intelligible as such, could be 
more violently absurd than that of the Incarna- 
tion. Now I see that this standpoint is wholly 
irrational. ... ' But the Incarnation is op- 
posed to common sense.' No doubt: utterly 
so ; but so it ought to be if true. Common 
sense is merely a rough register of common 
experience. But the Incarnation, if it ever 
took place, whatever else it may have been, 
was not a common event. ' But it is deroga- 
tory to God to become man.' How do you 
know? Besides, Christ was not an ordinary 
man. Both negative criticism and the positive 
effects of His life prove this ; while if we for a 
moment adopt the Christian point of view for 



The Unveiling of the Father 115 

the sake of argument, the whole raison d'etre 
of mankind is bound up in Him. Lastly, there 
are considerations per contra^ rendering an In- 
carnation antecedently probable."^ 

2. Now these considerations to which Ro- 
manes alludes are not foreign to the intellect- 
ual atmosphere of our age ; they are native to 
it ; they are in fact the offspring of the times, 
born of tlie spirit which now leads the best 
thoughts of men. 

The whole doctrine of development, as it is Evolution 
conceived by the deepest and clearest minds, ^o^ardsu 
looks forward to the discovery of an Incarna- 
tion which shall be at once the crown and the 
completion of the process of natural evolution. 
If nature is an orderly and progressive mani- 
festation of an Unseen Power ; if each succes- 
sive step in this manifestation realizes and 
exhibits something higher and more perfect, 
to which all that has gone before has pointed, 
and in which the potentialities of all previous 
developments are not only summed up, but 
raised to a new power ; if the mechanical struct- 
ure of inorganic substances contains a proph- 
ecy (only to be interpreted after the event) of 
organic life, and organic life is a basis for in- 
stinct and the elementary processes of intellect, 
1 Thoughts on Beligion, p. 186. 



116 



The Unveiling of the Father 



Personality 
the final 
revelation. 



and the rude forms of thought and feeling in 
the lower animals foreshadow the unfolding of 
reflective reason and moral consciousness in 
man, — then surely this reflective reason and 
this moral consciousness, in themselves con- 
fessedly imperfect, must be only the founda- 
tion for a fuller and more perfect manifestation 
of that Unseen Power out of whose depths 
all preceding manifestations have come forth. 
And if the universal verdict of human science 
and philosophy is correct in assuming that the 
lower must precede the higher, and that or- 
ganic life is above inorganic life, and that rea- 
son is above instinct, and that virtue is above 
automatic action, then it is to be expected that 
the complete manifestation of that Unseen 
Power which makes for Reason and Righteous- 
ness will neither be omitted nor intruded before 
its time. It cannot come too soon, without vi- 
olating the order of evolution. It cannot fail 
to come, without destroying the significance of 
evolution. 

But in what form can it come except in one 
which at once sums up all that has gone before 
it, and advances to a new level ? If the uni- 
verse contains an unveiling of the might, and 
wisdom, and reasonableness, and righteousness, 
of its Primal Cause, then certainly it must con- 



The Unveiling of the Father 117 

tain at last an unveiling of His personality. 
This is the only thing that remains to be 
added. This is the only thing that embraces 
all the rest and raises it to a new power. The 
highest category known to our minds is that 
of self-conscious life. Without the conception 
of a personal God, man's view of the universe 
must remain forever incomplete, incoherent, 
and unreasonable. Without the revelation of 
a personal God, the process of evolution as the 
unfolding of the real secret of the universe 
must remain unfinished and futile. Philosophy 
as well as religion pushes us forward to this 
conclusion. Personality is the ultimate reality. 
Personality must be the final revelation. But 
a person can be unveiled only in a personal 
form. Therefore all the presumptions of rea- 
son are in favour of an Incarnation of the 
Deity, not outside of nature, but in nature, to 
consummate and crown that visible evolution 
whereby the invisible things of Him from the 
creation of the world are clearly seen. And 
all the processes of intelligence are satisfied, 
and rest and repose in the conviction that 
the Word, which was in the beginning with 
God and which was God and by whom all 
things were made, finally became flesh and 
dwelt among us, revealing His glory, the glory 



118 



The Unveiling of the Father 



The gospel 
of the 

Incarnation 
is histori- 
cally con- 
sistent. 



as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of 
grace and truth .^ 

3. Moreover, this view of Christ is adapted 
to the present age because it is historically con- 
sistent. We have seen that it underlies the 
very existence and growth of the Christian 
Church. The testimony of eighteen centuries 
to the impossibility of explaining the person- 
ality of Christ on humanitarian grounds is in 
itself an evidence of His divinity. 

Lincoln was right when he said : " You can 
fool some of the people all of the time, and all 
of the people some of the time, but you can- 
not fool all of the people all of the time." A 
thousand attempts to account for the life of 
Christ without admitting His divinity have 
been made. Not one of them has succeeded 
in winning the assent and approbation of any 
great mass of men for any great length of 
time. They have hardly survived the lives of 
those who have invented them. Each new 
naturalistic theory of Christ has discredited 
and demolished its predecessors. And if any 
one of them is alive and finds credence to-day, 
it is only because it is the latest, and it is but 



1 See Lyman Abbott, The Evolution of Christianity 
(Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1894), "Christ is not the prod- 
uct of evolution, but the producer," pp. 240-242. 



The Unveiling of the Father 119 

waiting for its successor (as the theory of 
Socinus waited for the theory of Strauss, and 
the theory of Strauss for the theory of Renan) 
to be its judge and destroyer. 

Meantime historic Christianity, which be- '^he imprey- 

71(t I) Is VOClc 

holds God incarnate in Christ, stands as a rock qj- chns- 
around which the tides of opinion ebb and flow. Canity. 
The Church has changed in some things, but 
not in this. It has modified, enlarged, dimin- 
ished, or abandoned some articles of faith, but 
not this. If it be an error, it is such an error 
as the world has never seen anywhere else ; 
for it has not only stood firm through the 
fiercest and most persistent storm of criticism 
that has ever been directed against any human 
opinion, but it has also been the foundation of 
the strongest and saintliest lives that humanity 
has ever knoAvn. If it be a truth, it must be 
for every Christian preacher the central truth. 
For it is certain that this age of ours, with 
its ruthless critical spirit, with its keen histori- 
cal sense, will never respect the intelligence, 
though it may acknowledge the good inten- 
tions, of a man who professes to speak in the 
name of Christianity without proclaiming, as 
the core of his message, the Divine Christ. 

4. And this gospel meets the need of our 
times because it is the satisfaction of humanity. 



120 



The Unveiling of the Father 



The incar- 
nation 
satisfies the 
human 
heart. 



More urgent and painful even than the ques^ 
tions of the intellect in regard to the being and 
nature of God, are the misgivings of the heart 
in regard to His relations to us. If He is that 
remote and inaccessible Sovereign 

" Who sees with equal eyes, as Lord of all, 
A hero perish or a sparrow fall," 

what possible answer can we find in Him to 
the longings and desires of our souls for a 
Divine love ? what possible support can we find 
in Him for our struggles against outward 
temptation and indwelling evil ? what possible 
sympathy can we find in Him for our hopes 
and aspirations and upward strivings, out of 
the quicksands of heredity and environment, 
towards liberty and light ? The religion of 
the Incarnation is the only one that brings us 
near to Him, assures us of our kinship with 
Him, and of His infinite, practical, helpful love 
for us. This faith alone bridges the chasm 
that divides the eternal self-existent Spirit 
from our finite, despondent, earthbound souls. 
This faith alone gives us any knowledge of the 
things that we most need to know about Him. 
Deism is like a message written in an inscruta- 
ble hieroglyph which conveys no clear meaning 
to the mind. Theism is like a message which 
is intelligible to the intellect, but unsatisfac- 



us. 



The Unveiling of the Father 121 

tory to the heart, because it has no personal 
address and no signature. Christianity is a per- 
sonal message, signed by the hand of a Father, 
and conveyed to us by the hand of the Son. 

The comparison is imperfect. It falls far Christ is 
short of the truth. In Christianity the mes- 
senger is the message. The love which sent 
and the love which delivered it are the same. 
Christ is Immanuel, God with us. The gospel 
of the Incarnation does not profess to remove 
all intellectual perplexities in regard to the 
existence of God and our own souls. It pro- 
fesses simply to establish such a conscious re- 
lation between our souls and God that our 
ethical needs shall be satisfied at once ; and 
thus it shall be infinitely easier, either to dis- 
solve, or to endure, our intellectual perplexi- 
ties. This relation is possible only in Christ. 
And it is possible in Him only when we receive 
Him as the unveiling of the Father. This re- 
quires an act of faith. But it is a faith which 
is simpler in its form, more natural in its 
method, and more profound in its spiritual re- 
sults than any other. For in the last analysis 
it is just an act of personal confidence in a 
person. And this does not demand perfect 
knowledge, but absolute trust. 



122 The Unveiling of the Father 

The Deity of To imagine that we can adapt our preaching 

Christ is the . ,T . n i ^ . ^ i • t 

strength of ^^ ^^^^ ^S^ ^^ doubt by Weakening, concealing, 
our gospel, or abandoning the truth of the Deity of Christ 
is to mistake the great need of our times. It 
is to seek to commend our gospel by taking 
away from it the chief thing that men really 
want, — an assurance of sympathy and kinship 
with God. " One of the great marks of the 
youth of to-day," says Ernest Lavisse, — "I 
speak of thinking youth, — is a longing for the 
Divine." 1 This longing is to be met not by 
slighting, but by emphasizing, not by clouding, 
but by clarifying, not by withdrawing, but by 
advancing, the true Deity of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. Let us take up the words of the ancient 
creed : " We believe in one Lord -Jesus Christ., 
the Son of Grod^ only-begotten of the Father^ that 
is of the substance of the Father^ Crod of God., 
Light of Light.) very Grod of G-od, begotten, not 
made., being of one substance with the Father: 
by Whom all things were made which are in 
heaven and earth: Who, for us men and for our 
salvation, came down, and was incarnate, and was 
made man, and suffered, and rose the third day, 
and ascended into the heavens, and shall come 
to judge the quick and the dead.'"'^ 

1 Ernest Lavisse, La Generation de 1890. 

2 Symbolum Nicsenum, The Creeds of Christendom^ Vol. 
ii. (Harpers, 1882). 



IV 

THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD 



" Behold Him now where He comes ! 
Not the Christ of our subtle creeds, 
But the light of our hearts, of our homes, 
Of our hopes, our prayers, our needs ; 
The brother of want and blame, 
The lover of women and men, 
With a love that puts to shame 
All passions of mortal ken. 

****** 

** Ah no, thou life of the heart, 
Never shalt thou depart ! 
Not till the leaven of God 
Shall lighten each human clod ; 
Not till the world shall climb 
To thy height serene, sublime. 
Shall the Christ who enters oiir door 
Pass to return no more." 

— Richard Watson Gilder, 
The Passing of Christ. 



IV 

THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD 

Nearly fifty years ago, Horace Bushnell, ^9reat 

truth in 

the most mystical of logicians, or the most logi- eclipse. 
cal of mystics, delivered before Yale University 
a magnificent discourse upon The Diviniti/ of 
Christ. In that fine work of genius, wrought 
out of darkness and light, mystery and clear- 
ness, like an intricate carving of ebony and 
gold, I find these words: "Christ is in such 
a s.ense God, or God manifested, that the un- 
known term of His nature, that which we are 
most in doubt of, and about which we are least 
capable of any positive affirmation, is the 
human." ^ 

This sentence, it seems to me, is not of light, 
but of darkness. It does not represent that 
illuminating and harmonious kind of truth 
which comes directly from the divine revelation 
of Christ. It belongs rather to that obscured 

1 Horace Bushnell, God in Christ (New York, Scribners, 
1887), p. 123. 

126 



126 



The Human Life of God 



Theology 
has lost 
sight of 
Christ's 
humanity. 



and discordant manner of presenting truth 
which is the consequence of studying it too 
much at second-hand and too little at first- 
hand, too much in the speculations and reason- 
ings of men and too little in the facts of life 
wherein it was first manifested. Whatever 
may be said of this sentence as a statement of 
the result of dogmatic theology, — and in this 
sense I, for one, do not question its accuracy, 
— when we consider its plain meaning as an 
expression of Christian experience and faith, 
one thing is clear : It is utterly out of touch 
with the experience and faith of the first dis- 
ciples. It is in sharp and striking discord 
with the consciousness of the primitive Church. 
For if there is anything in regard to which the 
New Testament makes positive and undoubting 
affirmation, it is the complete, genuine, and 
veritable humanity of Christ. If there is any 
fact which stands out luminous and distinct 
in the experience of the early Christians, it is 
that they saw in Christ, not merely a myste- 
rious manifestation of the Divine in a form cal- 
culated to beget new doubts, and under con- 
ditions which must remain inscrutable and 
incomprehensible, but something utterly differ- 
ent. They saw the mystery reduced to terms 
of simplicity, the revelation levelled to the 



The Human Life of God 127 

direct apprehension of man, the unveiling of 
the Father under conditions which were so 
familiar that they dissolved doubts and diffi- 
culties. They saw in Christ the human life 
of God. 

The object of this lecture is, first, to trace Sow shall 

1 • ri , 1 . 1 • 1 j^i • • e the vision be 

very brieny the way m which this view ot restored? 
Christ has been beclouded so that His human- 
ity has appeared doubtful and less capable of 
positive affirmation ; second, to show how the 
primitive view of His person and life may be, 
and in the history of Christian faith often has 
been, recovered and restored to its pristine 
brilliancy and beauty ; and third, to try to 
express, though but imperfectly, the meaning 
and importance of this view for the present 
age. 



Definition is dangerous. Necessary it may Obscuration 
be ; useful it undoubtedly is ; but our recogni- ^//ormw a& 
tion of these qualities ought not to make us 
forget or deny the peril which the process cer- 
tainly involves. And this is the nature of the 
danger : the definition has an inherent ten- 
dency to substitute itself for the thing defined. 
The terms in which a fact is expressed creep 
into the place of the fact itself. The reality is 



128 



The Human Life of Qod 



An illustra- 
tion from 
the history 
of Art. 



removed insensibly to a remote distance behind 
the verbal symbols which represent it. The 
way of access to it is blocked, and its influ- 
ence is restricted by the forms of expression 
invented to define it. 

I do not know where we can find a more vivid 
illustration of this process than that which is 
given, in many ways, in the history of art. The 
first effort of the artist is to represent something 
that he has seen or imagined. Out of this 
effort and the work which it produces, grow 
certain methods and habits of representing 
landscape and architecture and the human 
figure. Out of these habits grow rules and 
formulas, not only for the hand but also for the 
eye. On these formulas schools are founded. 
In these schools the example of masters comes 
to have an authority which overshadows and 
limits the vision of facts as well as the repre- 
sentation of them. The Japanese artists, of 
certain schools, actually reproduce that infan- 
tile condition of sight in which all things 
appear fiat, in a single plane, without perspec- 
tive. The Giotteschi of Italy carried their 
disregard of anatomy to such a point that 
joints and articulations vanished from the 
human figure. 



The Human Life of God 129 

Now this same process of limitation by for- Representa- 
mulas may be observed, on the ideal side, in (jf^j^^i^ 
the course of religious art. The first pictures 
of Christ, traced in colour upon the walls of 
the Catacombs, or carved in stone upon the sar- 
cophagi of the Christian dead, do not give us 
indeed the very earliest conception of Him ; for 
the Christian art of the first two centuries, if it 
ever existed, has long since perished. But that 
which remains, dating from the third and fourth 
centuries, bears witness to an idea of the Christ 
which was simple and natural and humane. 
He appears as a figure of youthful beauty and 
graciousness ; the good Shepherd bearing a 
lamb upon His shoulders ; the true Orpheus 
drawing all creatures and souls by the charm 
of His amiable music. ^ These are only sym- 
bolic representations, yet they evidence a con- 
ception of Him which was still in touch with 
the facts. A little later we find an effort to 
conceive and depict Him with more realism. 
His face appears in pictures which resemble 
the description given in the spurious Epistle 
of Lentulus : " A man of dignified presence, 
with dark hair parted in the middle and 
flowing down, after the custom of the Naza- 

1 So in the paintings from the Catacombs of S. Agnese 
and S. Callisto. 

K 



130 



The Human Life of God 



Tradition 
petrifies 
Christian 
Art. 



renes, over both shoulders ; His brow clear 
and pure ; His unfurrowed face of pleasant 
aspect and medium complexion ; His mouth 
and nose faultless ; His short, light beard 
parted in the middle ; His eyes bright and 
lustrous."^ 

But when we pass on to the creations of so- 
called Byzantine art, we find ourselves face to 
face with an utterly different view of the Christ. 
His countenance now stares out in glittering 
mosaic from the walls of great churches, huge, 
dark, threatening, a dreadful and forbidding 
face. The fixed and formal lines are repeated 
and deepened by artist after artist. Every feat- 
ure of naturalness is obliterated ; every feature 
that seemed to express awfulness is exagger- 
ated and emphasized. The wide-set eyes, the 
long narrow countenance, the stern, inflexible 
mouth, — in this ocular definition the man 
Christ Jesus has vanished, and we see only the 
immense, immutable, and terrible Pantokrator, 
who cannot be touched with the feeling of our 
infirmities. 2 

When we turn to the intellectual life of the 
Church out of which this type of art grew, we 

1 This is the imago Christi which we see in the painting 
from the Catacomb of ;S'. Ponziano. 

2 This type was shown in the mosaic in the Church of St. 
Paul outside the walls, near Rome, lately destroyed by fire. 



The Human Life of God 131 

see there the process expLained. The early Dor/mas 
Greek Fathers, like IrentBus, went directly to ^^^^^ ^y 
the Holy Scriptures for their view of the per- ChHst. 
son of Christ, and frankly accepted all the 
features of the living, lovely portrait there dis- 
closed. They recognized without reserve the 
reality of Christ's human growth in wisdom and 
stature and in favour w^ith God and men ; the 
actual limitations of Christ's human knowledge 
as expressed in the questions that He asked and 
in His profession of ignorance in regard to the 
time of His second advent ; the intimacy of His 
sympathy with us in temptation, suffering, and 
death. But with the development of theological 
definition this direct view of Christ was modified, 
obscured, and at last totally eclipsed. Instead of 
looking at God through His revelation in Christ, 
the Fathers began to look at Christ through a 
more and more abstract, precise, and inflexible 
statement of the metaphysical idea of God. It 
became necessary to harmonize the Scripture 
record of the life of Jesus with the theories of 
the divine nature set forth in the decrees of 
councils and defined with amazing particularity 
in the writings of theologians. In the effort to 
accomplish this, two main lines of thought were 
followed. One line abandoned the belief in 



132 



The Human Life of God 



The hiding 
of the face 
of Jesus. 



Bending the 
Bible to fit 
definitions. 



Christ's real and complete humanity, and re- 
duced His human life to a tenuous and filmy 
apparition. The other line distinguished be- 
tween His humanity and His Divinity in such 
a way as to divide Him into two halves, either 
of which appears virtually complete without 
the other, and both of which are united, not in 
a single and sincere personality, but in an out- 
ward manifestation and a concealed life, cover- 
ing in some mysterious way a double centre of 
existence. It is only fair to say that the ex- 
treme results of these two lines of thought were 
condemned by the Church in the heresies of 
Doketism and ApoUinarianism, Eutychianism 
and Nestorianism. But it is equally fair to say 
that the influence of these theories was by no 
means checked nor extirpated. They continued 
to make themselves felt powerfully and perni- 
ciously ,' now in the direction of dissolving 
the humanity of Christ into a mere cloud 
enveloping His Deity ; and again in the 
direction of dividing and destroying the 
unity of His person in the definitions of His 
dual nature. 

It is not necessary, nor would it be possible, 
for us to trace this process in detail through all 
its complexities and self-contradictions. It 
will be enough to give two or three specimens 



The Human Life of God 133 

of the kind of work to which it led in dealing 
with two essential features of the picture of 
Christ which is given to us in the Gospels : His 
human limitation of knowledge, and His human 
growth in wisdom, stature, and grace. Both 
limitation and growth are unexempt conditions 
of manhood. Both are unquestionably attrib- 
uted to Clu'ist in the New Testament. Both 
are explicitly denied by theologians. Ephrem 
Syrus, commenting upon the Diatessaron of 
Tatian, says : " Christ, though He knew the 
moment of His advent, yet that they might not 
ask Him any more about it, said, I know it not.'''' ^ 
Chrysostom, in his explanation of St. Matthew 
xxiv. 36, paraphrases Christ's words in this 
extraordinary fashion : " For if thou seek after 
the day and the hour thou shalt not hear them 
of me, saith He ; but if of times and preludes, 
I will tell thee all exactly. For that indeed 
I am not ignorant of it, I have shown by many 
things. — I lead thee to the very vestibule ; 
and if 1 do not open unto thee the doors, this 
also I do for your good."^ John of Damascus, 
defending the orthodox faith, declares that, 

1 Evang. Concordant. Expos. (Aucher and Moesinger, 
Venice, 1876), p. 16. 

2 St. Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of St. Matthevj, 
Ixxvii. 2. The Nicene Fathers (New York, Christian Litera- 
ture Co., 1888), vol. X. 



134 The Human Life of God 

" Christ is said to advance in wisdom and 
stature and grace, because He grows in fact in 
stature, and through His growth in stature 
brings out into exhibition the wisdom which 
already existed in Him. . . . But those who 
say that He really grew in wisdom and grace as 
receiving increase in these, deny that the flesh 
was united to the word from the first moment 
of its existence."^ Peter Lombard does not 
explicitly adopt, but quotes with evident ap- 
proval, the opinion that the person of the eter- 
nal Word put on a human body and soul as a 
robe, in order that He might appear suitably to 
the eyes of mortals, yet in Himself He was not 
changed by this incarnation, but remained one 
and the same, immutable. ^ 

A very full and clear exhibition of the dark- 
ness and unreality in which the patristic and 
mediaeval theologians involved the person of 
Christ may be found in Professor A. B. Bruce's 
great book on The Humiliation of Christ? and 
in Canon Charles Gore's two admirable vol- 
umes on The Incarnation,'^ from which I have 

1 John Damascene, De Fide Orthod., Lib. iii. chap. xxii. 

2 Peter Lombard, Sentt., Book iii., Dist. vi. § 6. 

3 Prof. Alexander Balmain Bruce, The Humiliation oj 
Chnst (New York, Armstrongs, 1887). 

* Canon Charles Gore, The Incarnation of the Son of God, 
Bampton Lectures, 1891 (New York, Scribners, 1891). Dis- 



The Human Life of God 135 

taken some illustrations after verifying them. 
Professor Bruce sums up the matter by saying : 
" The effect, though not the design, of theories 
of Christ's person has been to a large extent to 
obscure some of these elementary truths, — 
the unity of the person, or the reality of the 
humanity, or the divinity dwelling within the 
man, or the voluntariness and ethical value of 
the state of the humiliation. That is, certain- 
ties have been sacrificed for uncertainties, facts 
for hypotheses, faith for speculation." ^ 

Canon Gore, in his Bampton Lectures, ^«^«^ 

hood of 

adroitly uses the Jesuit theologian De Lugo as jesus van- 
a man of straw through whom he may safely ^^^^^* 
and vigorously attack the false conceptions of 
Christ's person which are still current, and to a 
considerable degree dominant, in dogmatic the- 
ology. He says that De Lugo depicts a Christ 
" who, if He was, as far as His body is con- 
cerned, in a condition of growth, was, as re- 
gards His soul and intellect, from the first 
moment and throughout His life in full enjoy- 
ment of the beatific vision. Externally a way- 
farer, a viator^ inwardly He was throughout 
a comprehensor, He had already attained. . . . 
It is deAied that He can be strictly called 

sertations on Subjects connected with the Incarnation (New 
York, Scribners, 1895). i The Humiliation of Christ, p. 192. 



136 



The Human Life of God 



Modern ex- 
amples of 
false Chris- 
tology. 



' the servant of God ' even as man, in spite of the 
direct use of that expression in the Acts of the 
Apostles. He is spoken of at the institution of 
the Eucharist as offering sacrifice to His own 
Godhead."! 

Canon Gore condemns this picture by De 
Lugo as in striking contradiction to that which 
the New Testament presents. But the point 
which I wish to make clear and distinct, is that, 
in spite of this contradiction, the picture has 
not been frankly and finally discarded in Chris- 
tian theology. It still exercises an obscuring 
and perverting influence upon the vision of 
Christ. It still produces, by imitation, repre- 
sentations of Him in which definitions dominate 
facts, and formulas hide or obliterate realities. 
We do not need to go back to the seventeenth 
century, nor abroad to the Jesuits, for our ex- 
amples. We may turn to Archdeacon Wilber- 
force's book on The Incarnation^ and find him 
representing the body of Christ as miraculous 
in its freedom from sickness, its power over 
animals, its exemption from the necessity of 
death, 'knd its inherent power of communicat- 
ing life to others.^ In regard to the mind of 



1 The Incarnation, p. 164. 

2 Archdeacon Wilberforce, The Doctrine of the Incarna- 
tion (New York, Young, 1885), pp. 60-65. 



The Human Life of God 137 

Christ, he says that " since it would be impious 
to suppose that our Lord had pretended an 
ignorance which He did not experience, we 
are led to the conclusion [astonishing conclu- 
sion !] that Avliat He partook, as man, was 
not actual ignorance, but such deficiency in 
the means of arrivmg at truth as belongs to 
mankind."^ We may turn to the Dogmatic 
Theology of Dr. W. G. T. Shedd and read: 
' ' Jesus Christ as a theanthropic person was ^ double 
constituted of a divine nature and a human ^^^^ 
nature. The divine nature had its own form 
of experience, like the mind in an ordinary 
human person ; and the human nature had its 
own form of experience, like the body in a com- 
mon man. The experiences of the divine nature 
were as diverse from those of the human nature 
as those of the human mind are from those of 
the human body. Yet there was but one per- 
son who was the subject-ego of both of these 
experiences. At the very time when Christ 
was conscious of weariness and thirst by the 
well of Samaria, He also was conscious that He 
was the eternal and only-begotten Son of God, 
the second person in the Trinity. This is proved 
by His words to the Samaritan woman : ' Who- 
soever drinketh of the water that I shall give 

1 Ihid., p. 71. 



138 



The Human Life of Crod 



His man- 
hood a 
vesture. 



him shall never thirst ; but the water that I 
shall give him shall be in him a well of water 
springing up into everlasting life. I that speak 
unto thee am the Messiah.' The first-mentioned 
consciousness of fatigue and thirst came through 
the human nature in His person ; the second- 
mentioned consciousness of omnipotence and 
supremacy came through the divine nature in 
His person. If He had not had a human nature, 
He could not have had the former consciousness; 
and if He had not had a divine nature. He could 
not have had the latter. Because He had both 
natures in one person, He could have both."^ 
We may turn to Canon Liddon's magnificent 
work on The Divinity of our Lord and find him 
writing : " Christ's Manhood is not of Itself an 
individual being ; It is not a seat and centre of 
personality ; It has no conceivable existence 
apart from the act whereby the Eternal Word 
in becoming Incarnate called It into being and 
made It His Own. It is a vesture which He has 
folded around His person ; It is an instrument 
through which He places Himself in contact with 
men and whereby He acts upon humanity. "^ 

1 W. G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology (New York, Scrib- 
ners, 1888), vol. ii., pp. 307, 308. 

2 H. P. Liddon, The Divinity of our Lord and Saviour 
Jesus Christy Bampton Lectures, 1866 (London, Rivingtons, 
11th edition, 1885), p. 262. 



The Human Life of God 139 

And so, if we accept this picture of Christ, The human 
the manhood of Jesus fades, retreats, grows ^^^^^ * 
dim and shadowy. It wavers like a veil. It 
dissolves like mist. It descends again mys- 
terious and impenetrable, illusory and imper- 
sonal, to envelop Him whom we love and adore 
in its strange and unfamiliar folds. We grope 
after Him, but we can touch nothing but the 
hem of His mystic robe. We long for Him, 
but He approaches us, and comes into contact 
with us, only through an instrument. He is 
not what He seems. The Son of God behind 
that veil is beyond our reach. The Son of 
man, whom human eyes beheld and human 
hands touched, is not the real, living, veritable 
Saviour, but only the form, the garment, of an 
inscrutable life. And if, in our dire confusion, 
our reasoning faith still succeeds in holding 
fast to the Eternal Logos, our confiding faith is 
maimed and robbed by the loss of that true, 
near, personal, loving, sympathizing Jesus, who 
was born of a woman, suffered under Pontius 
Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. He is 
gone from us, as certainly as if the Pharisees 
had spoken truth when they said that His dis- 
ciples came by night and stole Him away. The 
thing of which we are most in doubt, and 
about which we are least capable of any positive 



140 



The Human Life of God 



affirmation, as Dr. Bushnell said, is the human- 
ity of Christ. We are left witli a perfectly 
orthodox doctrine of two natures, but we no 
longer have a clear and simple gospel of One 
Person to preach to doubting men. 



The cry of 
the heart for 
a human 
Saviour. 



The wor- 
ship of the 
Virgin 
Mary. 



n 

But the heart of Christendom has never 
rested content with this distant, vague, uncer- 
tain view of the real manhood of our Lord. 
There has always been a protest against it. 
There has always been an effort to escape from 
it. 

We can see a strange and indirect but 
indubitable evidence of this deep inward dis- 
satisfaction, in the rise and growth of an im- 
passioned devotion to the human mother of 
Jesus. The worship of the Virgin Mary was 
a reprisal for the obscuration of the humanity 
of her Son. In the thought of her true 
womanly tenderness and affection, her real and 
unquestionable sorrows, her simple and familiar 
joys, her intimate, genuine, unfailing sympathy 
with all that makes our mortal life a bitter, 
blessed reality to us, the souls of the lowly and 
the lonely found that peace and consolation 



The Human Life of God 141 

which they could no longer find in the con- 
templation of the distant Second Person of the 
Trinity through the telescope of theology. 
That \yhicli Jesus Himself was to John and 
Peter, to the household of Bethany, to the 
penitent publican, and to the woman which 
was a sinner, Mary became to the baffled and 
confused faith of a later age, — an approachable 
mediator of the divine mercy, a helper who 
could really understand and feel the need of 
those who cried for help, a warm and living 
image of the Eternal Sympathy in flesh and 
blood. In the light of mediaeval dogmatics 
Mariolatry appears not without its justifica- 
tion. And for my part, I should not wish to be 
bound to the Christology of Peter Lombard 
and Thomas Aquinas, without finding the com- 
pensation which their followers found in per- 
sonal devotion and confidential trust, flowing 
instinctively and irresistibly towards the blessed 
Virgin. 

But, after all, this was only a substitute for ^e search 
the real thing. It gave to faith the image of 
a lovely and adorable humanity in closest union 
with God ; but it did not give back the old 
vision of the human life of God. And so 
through all the ages we see men turning, now 
in solitary thought, now in great companies, to 



142 The Human Life of G-od 

seek that vision. The renaissance of Christian 
art, with its beautiful pictures of the infancy of 
Jesus, with its piercing and pathetic representa- 
tions of the sufferings of Jesus, bears witness 
to the eagerness of that search. The revivals 
of Christian life, seen in such diverse yet cog- 
nate forms as the rise of the " Poor Men of 
Lyons " and the foundation of the " Brother- 
hood of St. Francis " are evidences of the same 
movement back to Christ. Peter Waldo outside 
of the Church, and Francis of Assisi within the 
Church, were awakened by the same vision of 
Jesus, " a man of sorrows and acquainted with 
grief," and were inspired by the same desire to 
make His real human life the pattern of all piety 
The spirit and the example of all goodness. The Refor- 
mation " ^^^^ioiii which was at once and equally an intel- 
lectual and a spiritual protest against the arro- 
gance of current theology and the coldness of 
religious life, supplies no better watchword to 
express its great motive than the saying of 
Erasmus : " I could wish that those frigid subt- 
leties either were completely cut off, or were 
not the only things that the theologians held as 
certain, and that the Christ pure and simple might 
he implanted deep ivithin the minds of men.''^^ 

1 Erasmus, quoted in Gore, Dissertations, etc., p. 180, 
Epistle 207. 



The Human Life of God 143 

Modern Biblical scholarship, with its splendid 
apparatus of linguistic and historical learning, 
proceeding in part, at first, from a sceptical im- 
pulse, has developed in our generation, either 
through the conversion of sceptics in the process 
of research, or through the awakening of be- 
lievers to the necessities of their faith, into a 
reverent and eager quest for the historic Christ, 
the Jesus of the Gospels, the Lord of the primi- 
tive Church, that we may see Him as the first 
Christians saw Him, in the integrity of His per- 
son and the sincerity of His life, and receive from ''Back to 

. . Christ!" 

Him what they received, — a faith that dissolved 
doubts and an inspiration that conquered diffi- 
culties. Back to the New Testament of our 
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, — back to the 
facts that lie behind the definitions, back to 
the Person who embodies the truth, back to the 
record and reflection of that wliich the apostles 
"heard, and saw with their eyes, and looked 
upon, and their hands handled of the word of 
life," — this, and this only, is the way that leads 
us within sight of 

" the heaven-drawn picture 
. Of Christ, the livmg Word." 

Now it is a marvellous thing, and one for 
which we can never be grateful enough, that 



144 



The Human Life of God 



The Bible 
gives us a 
K'uisman- 
Redeemer. 



The Christ 
of the 
Gospels. 



when we come to the New Testament in this 
spirit, we find in it exactly what we need ; not an 
abstract formula, not a collection of definitions, 
but the graphic reflection of a Person seen 
from a fourfold point of view, and the simple 
record of manifold human experience under the 
direct and dominant influence of that Person. 
And the one fact that emerges clear and tri- 
umphant from the reflection and the record, is 
that the writers of the New Testament never 
were in doubt of the human nature of Christ 
and never hesitated to make the most positive 
affirmations in regard to it. 

The Christ of the Gospels is bone of our 
bone, flesh of our flesh, mind of our mind, 
heart of our heart. He is in subjection to 
His parents as a child. He grows to man- 
hood. His character is unfolded and perfected 
by discipline. He labours for daily bread, and 
prays for Divine grace. He hungers, and 
thirsts, and sleeps, and rejoices, and weeps. 
He is anointed with the Spirit for His minis- 
try. He is tempted. He is lonely and dis- 
appointed. He asks for information. He 
confesses ignorance. He interprets the facts 
of nature and life with a prophetic insight. 
But He makes no new disclosure of the secrets 
of omniscience. There is no hint nor indica- 



The Human Life of God 145 

tion that He is leading a double life, reigning 
consciously as God while He is suffering appar- 
ently as man. His personality is simple and 
indivisible. The glory of what He is and does, 
lies not only in its perfection, but in the hard 
conditions of its accomplishment. Superhuman 
in His origin, as the only-begotten Son of God ; 
superhuman in His office and Avork, as the re- 
vealer of the Father and the redeemer of man- 
kind ; in His earthly existence the Christ of the 
Gospels enters without reserve and without de- 
ception into all the conditions and limitations 
which are necessary to give to the world, once 
and forever, the human life of God. 

When we turn to the Epistles to see how ^^« Christ 
this view of Christ was affected by the recog- Epistles. 
nition of His divine glory and power as one 
who had been raised to the right hand of God 
and made head over all things to the Church, 
two things strike us with tremendous force. 
First, the identity of His person was not lost, 
nor the continuity of His being broken : the 
exalted Christ is none other than "this same 
Jesus." ^ Second, the reality and absoluteness 
of His humiliation are emphasized as the ground 
and cause of His exaltation. 

How vividly these two things come out, for 
lActs i. 11. 



146 The Human Life of God 

St. PauVs example, in the writings of St. Paul. It has 
been well said that " the Christ whom Paul had 
seen was the risen Christ, and the conception 
of Him in His glorified character is the one 
which rules his thoughts and forms the start- 
ing-point of his teaching." ^ Corresponding to 
this present glory, Paul assumes an eternally 
pre-existent glory of Christ as the image of 
the invisible God, the medium and end of crea- 
tion. ^ Now it is of this Person, divinely glori- 
ous in the past as the One who is before all 
things and in whom all things consist,^ divinely 
glorious in the present as the One who is far 
above every name that is named, not only in 
this world but in that which is to come,* — ■ 
it is of this Person that Paul writes, in words 
so strong that they touch the very border of 
the impossible : " For our sakes, He beggared 
Himself that we through His beggary might 
be enriched."^ And again: "He, existing in 
the form of God, did not consider an equal 
state with God a thing to be selfishly grasped 
and held, but emptied Himself and took the 
form of a slave, being made in the likeness of 
man."^ These powerful expressions, "self- 

1 Stevens, The Pauline Theology, p. 206. 

2 Col. i. 16. 3 Col. i. 17. * Eph. i. 21. 
5 2 Cor. viii. 9. ^ phn. n 6, 7. 



The Human Life of G-od 147 

beggary," "self-emptying," seem to be directly 
designed to break up the conventional moulds 
in which dogmatic theology has attempted to 
cast the truth and let it harden. They bring , 
back a vital warmth and motion into the facts 
of the Incarnation. Once more it glows and 
flows. Once more we see that it is not a mere 
exhibition of being but a process of becoming. 
The idea of self-beggary mightily overflows 
the mere statement that a human nature was 
added and united to the divine nature; for 
that would have been no impoverishment but 
an enrichment. The idea of self -emptying The 
shatters the narrow dogma that the Son of ^^^*^ 
God suffered no change in Himself when He 
became man. It was a change so absolute, so 
immense, that it can only be compared with 
the vicissitude from fulness to emptiness. He 
laid aside the existence-form of God, in order 
that He might take the existence-form of man. 
Whatever right He had to an equal state of 
glory with God, that right He did not cling 
to, but surrendered, in order that He might 
become- a servant. And upon this real self- 
emptying there followed a real self-humilia- 
tion, wherein, being found in fashion as a man, 
He became obedient unto death, even the death 



148 The Human Life of God 

of the cross. ^ It was on account of this, — • 
and by " this " we must understand the entire 
actual operation of the self-denying, self-hum- 
bling, self-sacrificing mind of Christ, — it was 
for this reason, St. Paul declares, that " God 
highly exalted Him, and gave unto Him the 
name which is above every name."^ And I 
know not how to interpret such language 
with any reality of intelligence, unless it 
means that the present glory of the Son of 
God is in some true sense the result of His 
having become man and so fulfilled the will 
of God. 
The Epistle This view, which St. Paul condenses into a 
brotherhood, single pregnant "wherefore," is expanded in 
the Epistle to the Hebrews. The object of 
this Epistle is to show the superiority of the 
priesthood and sacrifice of Christ, which are 
substantial and enduring, to the priesthood and 
sacrifice of the old dispensation, which were 
shadowy and transient. But the method which 
the writer follows is not to deny, but to assert 
the verity of Christ's humanity. Without this 
He could not be the true priest nor offer the 
true sacrifice. ''In all things it behoved Him 
to be made like unto His brethren."^ " For we 
have not an high priest which cannot be touched 
1 Phil. ii. 8. 2 Phil. ii. 9. 3 Heb. ii. 17. 



scension. 



The Human Life of God 149 

with the feeling of our infirmities : but was in 
all points tempted like as we are, yet without 
sin." ^ " Though He were a Son, yet learned 
He obedience by the things which He suffered, 
and being made perfect. He became the author 
of eternal salvation unto all them that obey 
Him." 2 This complete incarnation, this thor- The glory 
ougfh trial under human conditions, this perfect ^-^^^^ ^" 
discipline of obedience through suffering, was a 
humiliation. But it was in no sense a degrada- 
tion. On the contrary, it was a crowning of 
Christ with glory and honour in order that He 
might taste death for every man. " For it be- 
came Him, for whom are all things, and by 
whom are all things, in bringing many sons to 
glory, to make the captain of their salvation 
perfect through suffering. "2 If the Epistle to 
the Hebrews teaches anything, it certainly 
teaches this. The humanity of Jesus was not 
the veiling but the unveiling of the divine 
glory. The limitations, temptations, and suffer- 
ings of manhood were the conditions under 
which alone Christ could accomplish the great- 
est work of the Deity, — the redemption of a 
sinful race. The seat of the divine revelation 
and the centre of the divine atonement was and 
is the human life of God. 

1 Heb. iv. 15. 2 Heb. v. 8, 9. 3 Heb. ii. 9, 10. 



150 



The Human Life of Grod 



jh 



A summary 
of conclu- 
sions. 



Current 
theology 
at fault. 



Human 
theories 
not to be 
insisted 
upon. 



Here, then, we may pause for a moment and 
try to sum up the conclusions to which the New 
Testament leads us in regard to the person of 
Christ. 

I am sincerely anxious not to be misunder- 
stood. On the one hand, I would not conceal 
for a moment my conviction that current theol- 
ogy has failed, very often and very largely, to 
do justice to the meaning of the Incarnation on 
the human side, and that we must go back to 
the image of Jesus Christ as it is reflected in the 
Gospels to purify, and refresh, and simplify 
our faith. We should not suffer any reverence 
for ancient definitions of doctrine, however well 
founded, nor any fear of incurring reproach and 
mistrust as innovators, to deter us from that 
necessary and loyal return to the reality of the 
Person in whom our creed centres and on whom 
it rests. To find Jesus anew, to see Him again, 
as if for the first time, in the wondrous glory 
of His humility, is the secret of the revival of 
Christianity in every age. This is not innova- 
tion ; it is renovation. 

On the other hand, we have no right and we 
ought to have no inclination to insist exclusively 
upon any particular theory as the only possible 



The Human Life of God 151 

explanation of the facts of the Incarnation. 
Every earnest and thoughtful man must feel 
that these facts are so deep and mysterious that 
the plummet of human reason cannot sound 
their ultimate recesses. With all our thinking 
upon this subject, there must ever mingle a con- 
sciousness of insufficiency and a confession of 
ignorance. But with this confession of igno- 
rance there must go also a clear recognition of 
those portions of the truth which are unques- 
tionably revealed in the New Testament. Three 
things are there made plain to faith. 

1. God is so closely related to man, and the ^^^e vital 
likeness of God in man is so real, that the Di- 
vine Logos is able to descend by a free act of 
self-determining love into the lower estate of 
human existence, and humble Himself to the 
conditions of manhood without losing His per- 
sonal identity. 

2. The essence of the Gospel is its declara- 
tion of the fact that this act of condescension, 
of self-humiliation, actually has been performed, 
and that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God 
who has taken upon Him the existence-form of 
a servant, and lived a truly human life, and 
been obedient even unto death, in order to re- 
veal to the world the saving love of God. 



152 • The Human Life of G-od 

3. The distinctive attributes of personality 
in Christ (self-consciousness and self-deter- 
mination) are not dual, as of two persons, 
the one divine and the other human, co-exist- 
ing side by side in a double life, but individual, 
and manifested as the life of one person. That 
person is the Son of God, who laid aside the 
glory which He had with the Father, and emp- 
tied Himself, and so became the Son of man ; 
and on account of this humiliation God hath 
highly exalted Him and crowned Him with 
glory and honour as the God-man forever. 
These points These are the points which are vital to the 
defended. reality of the Gospel of the Incarnation. All 
theories which make these points clear, safe- 
guard the truth in its integrity and in its rec- 
onciling power. The question of the method 
of the divine humiliation and the human exal- 
tation of Christ, lies beyond these points. It 
is not necessary to insist upon any particular 
form of its solution. Indeed, it may well be 
that the profundity of the question, the inher- 
ent mystery of the facts of life and personality 
with which it deals, and the limitations of 
human thought and language, preclude the 
possibility of a complete and final answer at 
present. It must be frankly acknowledged 
that none of the solutions which have been pro- 



The Human Life of God 158 

pounded hitherto are free from serious perplex- 
ities. But it must be recognized with equal 
frankness that the theories which have been 
put forward in modern times, with new earnest- 
ness and power, by men of unquestionable loy- 
alty to the Christianity of the New Testament, 
who have sought to find a clear and positive 
meaning for the great word Kenosis, which 
St. Paul uses to describe the self-emptying of 
Christ in the Incarnation, — theories which 
have been stigmatized as kenotic, as if the name 
were enough to mark them as unorthodox, — 
are so far from being heretical that they have 
the rare merit of conserving and emphasizing a 
truth of surpassing value, undoubtedly taught 
in the Bible, and too much neglected, if not 
practically denied, during many centuries of 
theological speculation. It may be, as Julius 
Miiller held, that the distinctive attributes of Various 

. methods of 

personality are, abstractly considered, identical safe-guard- 
in God and man, so that, by the divine self- ^^3 them. 
limitation in the Incarnation, they are actually 
unified, like two circles which have a common 
centre.^ It may be, as Dr. Fairbairn holds, 
that the Son of God, being the eternal repre- 

1 For this statement of Miiller's view, which he gave in 
his lectures, I am indebted to Dr. George P. Fisher, who was 
one of his hearers. 



154 The Human Life of God 

sentative of the filial relationship within the 
Godhead, the symbol of the created within the 
uncreated, needed but to surrender the form 
and status of the uncreated Son in order to 
assume, by the same act, the form and status 
which man as the created Son was intended to 
realize.^ It may be, as Godet holds, that the 
Incarnation was by deprivation, and that the 
Eternal Word renounced His divine mode of 
being, and entered into life, without omnisci- 
ence, omnipresence, or omnipotence, as an un- 
conscious babe. 2 It matters little in what form 
of words we try to express the transcendent 
truth. But it matters much, it is supremely 
important for the integrity of our Gospel and 
for its influence upon the heart of this doubting 
age, that we should hold fast to the fact that 
the life of Jesus of Nazareth is simply and 
sincerely the human life of God. 
The new The time is at hand when this simple and 

ChHst profound view of Christ, which beholds in Him 

the God-man in whom Deity is self-limited 
and humbled in order that humanity may be 
divinely exalted and perfected, must break 
through the clouds which have obscured it, and 
become the leading light of religion and theol- 

1 The Place of Christ in Modern Theology^ p. 476. 

2 Godet, Commentary on John i. 14. 



The Human Life of God 155 

ogy. The life of Christ needs to be restudied 
and rewritten under this luminous guidance, in 
absolute and unhesitating loyalty to the facts 
as they lie before our eyes in the Gospels.^ The 
doctrine of Christ's person needs to be recon- 
structed and restated in this light. It must 
include, as the creed of Chalcedon included, 
not only the truth of a Homoousia — a sameness 
of nature and experience — with God, which 
the past has vindicated ; but also the equal 
truth of a Homoousia with man, which the fut- 
ure is to unfold as the universality of Christ's 
manhood is exhibited through His progressive 
triumphs among all the races of men and all 
the modes of human life. The humanity of the 
incarnate Christ must stand out as clear, as pos- 

1 "No action of our Saviour's earthly life, from Bethlehem 
to Calvary, exhibits divinity. He appears first as a helpless 
babe in the manger. He is subject to His parents. As the 
child grows, He waxes strong in spirit and increases in wis- 
dom. Such an increase in wisdom implies increase in know- 
ledge, and less knowledge or greater ignorance to-day than 
to-morrow. Omniscience could not have been exercised by 
the Jesus who was growing in wisdom. If any say here, as 
we usually do, that the humanity grew but the divinity was 
omniscient, let us ask if there were two persons in Jesus. 
This Nestorianism is practically the creed of the present day 
with the Reformed Churches. They have gone over to a 
virtual duplication of the person of Christ." — Howard 
Crosby, The True Humanity of Christ (New York, Ran- 
dolph, 1880). 



156 The Human Life of Crod 

itive, as indubitable, as His Deity. Nay, more^ 
it must stand where the New Testament puts 
it, in the foreground of faith. For it is only in 
this humanity that we can truly find the Son of 
God who loved us and gave Himself for us. 
The old How urgent and pressing are the needs of 

definitions 

inadequate, our own age which call US to this work! How 
far behind us, how effete and inadequate, are 
the terms and illustrations which were used in 
former ages to express the results of human 
thought in regard to the person of Christ ! 
Recall, for instance, that fine similitude of the 
heated sword which the Lutheran theologians 
borrowed from the Fathers to explain the 
union of the divine with the human in Christ! 
To them it was satisfactory because they re- 
garded heat as one substance and iron as 
another substance. In their view the divine 
nature penetrated and pervaded the human 
nature as the caloric fluid was supposed to per- 
meate a mass of metal. But in our world the 
caloric fluid does not exist. Heat is not a sub- 
stance, but a mode of motion in substances. 
In the light of modern science the old simili- 
tude fades into a meaningless comparison of 
things which cannot be compared. 

We cannot accept the scholastic terminology 
of " natures " and '• subsistences " in the final 



The Human Life of God 157 

and absolute sense in which it was once em- 
ployed. The philosophy of realism, which 
ascribed an objective existence to universals 
apart from individuals, is not the philosophy of 
to-day. Its language is not only foreign, but 
dead. The philosophy of being and not-being 
has opened to receive the philosophy of becom- 
ing ; and, in so doing, it has been utterly trans- 
formed. 

Life is now the regnant idea ; personality its Life is the 
utmost expression. It is in the facts of life, ^^^^^^ 
its secret potencies, its mysterious limitations 
in germ and seed, its magnificent unfoldings in 
the process of development that we must seek 
our comparisons for the Incarnation. And the 
very search will bring us face to face with the 
conviction that life in all its manifestations 
transcends analysis without ceasing to be the 
object of knowledge. 

In the living world the boundaries of imagi- ^^ ^^^^ 

,. . [, iif& but can- 

nation are not cotermmous with the limits oi not define it. 
apprehension. We know many facts and 
forms of life whose modes of becoming we 
cannot imagine. It is just as impossible for 
us to conceive how the life of the oak, root and 
trunk and branch and leaf, form and colour 
and massive strength, is all folded in the tiny, 
colourless, unshaped seed, as it is to conceive 



158 



The Human Life of Crod 



how the life of God is embodied in the man 
Christ Jesus. But the difficulty of conceiving 
the manner of this infolding, this embodiment, 
does not destroy for us the reality of the life. 
Indeed, if we could explain it entirely, if we 
could trace it perfectly as in a diagram, if we 
could observe it completely, as in one of those 
beautiful models of flowers which a skilful 
artist 1 has recently made to illustrate his lect- 
ures on botany, we should know that it was not 
life, but only a picture of it. The picture is 
useful, but it is not vital. The metaphor has 
its value, but it falls far short of the truth. 
Self-heggary and self-emptying are but "words 
thrown out towards " an unimaginable but not 
unreasonable manifestation of the Divine Love 
as life. The reality to which they point us is 
the Son of God descending to live under all 
the conditions and limitations of energy and 
consciousness which are proper to the Son of 
man : the Word made flesh and dwelling among 
us, like unto His brethren in all things. 

IV 



It would be hard to overestimate the signifi- 



The import- 
ance of this (. 1 . • <> 1 

view for the cancc of this view lor the present age, and the 
present age, importance of setting it forth as a living truth 

1 William Hamilton Gibson. 



The Human Life of God 159 

iu the language of to-day. It is the only view 
which gives us any ground of reality for our 
faith in the kinship of man Avith God. If the 
Son of God, who is the image of the Father, by 
laying aside the outward prerogatives of His 
divine mode of existence, actually becomes 
human, then, and only then, the divine image 
in which man was created is no mere figure of 
speech, but a substantial likeness of spiritual 
being. There is a true fellowship between 
our souls and our Father in heaven. Virtue 
is not a vain dream, but a definite striving 
towards His perfection. Revelation is not a 
deception, but a message from Him who knows 
all to those who know only a part. Prayer is 
not an empty form, but a real communion. 

" Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit 
can meet : 
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands 
and feet."i 

This view of the spiritual relation of man to The Unship 
God cannot possibly have any foundation in ^^^^ 
fact, deep enough and strong enough to with- 
stand the sweeping floods of scepticism, unless 
it builds upon the rock of a veritable Incarna- 
tion. The discoveries of modern science, en- 
larging enormously our conceptions of the 
1 Tennyson, The Higher Pantheism. 



160 The Human Life of Grod 

physical universe, have not only put man (as 
we said in the first lecture) in a position to 
receive a larger and loftier vision of the glory 
of God, but they have made such a vision in- 
dispensable. And they have emphasized, with 
overwhelming force, the form in which that 
vision must come in order to meet our needs 
and strengthen faith for its immense task. If 
we are not to be utterly belittled and crushed 
by the contemplation of the vast mass of matter 
and the tremendous play of force by which we 
are surrounded ; if we are still to hold that the 
vital is greater than the mechanical, the moral 
than the material, the spiritual than the physi- 
cal; if we are to maintain the old position of 
all noble and self -revering thought, that " man 
is greater than the universe," — there is nothing 
that can so profoundly confirm and establish 
us, there is nothing that can so surely protect 
and save us from "the distorting influences of 
our own discoveries," as the revelation of the 
Supreme Being in an unmistakably vital, moral, 
spiritual, and human form. 
Thetrm Such a revelation at once rectifies, purifies, 

and elevates our view of God Himself. For if 
the Son of God can surrender omnipresence, 
omniscience, and omnipotence without destroy- 
ing His personal identity, then the central 



The Human Life of God 161 

essence of the Deity is neither infinite wisdom 
nor infinite power, but perfect holiness and 
perfect goodness. And so from the very 
lowest valley of humiliation we catch clear 
sight of the very loftiest summit of theology, 
the serene and shining truth that God is Love. 

In the light of this truth we behold also the The supreme 
highest perfection of man and the path which i^y^^ 
leads to it. Love is the fulfilling of the law, 
and the supreme pattern of love is the example 
of Christ. And whether we look at it from 
the divine side as the supreme self-sacrifice of 
God, or from the human side as the complete 
obedience of man, everything depends upon the 
genuineness and sincerity of this example. Un- 
less the Son of God truly became man, the In- 
carnation cannot be, as Bishop Westcott calls 
it, "a revelation of human duties." What 
strength could we draw from His victory over 
temptation if He was not exposed as we are 
to the assaults of evil ? What consolation 
could we draw from His patience if He was 
not a man of sorrows and acquainted with 
grief ? " Jesus Christ," says one of the greatest 
of French theologians, " is not the Son of God 
hidden in the Son of man retaining all the 
attributes of Divinity in a latent state. This 



162 The Human Life of God 

would be to admit an irreducible duality which 
would make the unity of His person vanish 
and withdraw Him from the normal conditions 
of human life. His obedience would become 
illusory, and His example would be without 
application to our race. No, when the Word 
became flesh, He humbled Himself, He put off 
His glory, being rich He made Himself poor, 
and became as one of us, only without sin, that 
He might pass through the moral conflict with 
all the risks of freedom."^ When we see Him 
thus, we know what it means to follow Him 
and to be like Him. 
The value of Finally, the whole value of the Atonement, 

the atone- . . .,. . ^ 

ment. 11^ i^s reconciling influence on the heart of man, 

in its exhibition of the heart of God, depends 
upon the actuality of the Incarnation. If He 
who died on Calvary was a mere theophany, 
like the angel of Jehovah who appeared to 
Abraham, then His death was merely a dra- 
matic spectacle. The body of Jesus was broken, 

God suffers but God was not touched. But if the Father 
truly spared not His own Son, but delivered 
Him up for us all, then the Father also suf- 
fered by sympathy, making an invisible sacri- 
fice, an infinite surrender of love for our sakes. 

1 De Pressens^, Jesus-Christ (Paris, 1865), Book I., chap. 
v., p. 254. 



with and for 
us. 



The Human Life of God 163 

Then the Son also suffered, making a visible 
sacrifice, and pouring out His soul unto death 
to redeem us from the fear of death and the 
power of sin. And this becomes real to our 
faith and potent upon our souls only when we 
see the human life of God, agonizing in the 
garden, tortured in the judgment-hall, and ex- 
piring upon the cross. Then we can say 

" Oh Love Divine ! that stooped to share 
Our sharpest pang, our bitterest tear.'* 

Then we can look up to a God who is not im- 
passible, as the speculations of men have falsely 
represented Him, but passible, and therefore 
full of infinite capacities of pure sorrow and 
saving sympathy. Then the dumb and sullen 
resentment which rises in noble minds at the 

, v 1 i r TT • • -u • T. xT_ • Doubts dis- 

thought 01 a u ni verse m which there is so ^^^^^ ^^ ^^^^ 
much helpless pain and hopeless grief, created thought of 
by an immovable Being who has never felt p^j^thy. 
and can never feel either pain or grief, — that 
sense of moral repulsion from the idea of an 
unsuffering and unsympathetic Creator which 
is, and always has been, the deepest, darkest 
spring of doubt, fades away, and we behold a 
God who became human in order that He 
might bear, though innocent and undeserving, 
all our pains and all our griefs. 



164 The Human Life of God 

IfthT^'"'^ Thus the men who believe in the human life 
human of God Can stand before the doubting age, as 

David stood before the disillusioned, downcast, 
despondent Hebrew king, in Robert Browning's 
splendid poem of " Saul." The word, sought in 
vain among the glories of nature, among the 
joys of human intercourse, the word of faith 
and hope and love and life, comes to us, leaps 
upon us, flashes through us. 



"See the King — I would help him, but cannot, the 
wishes fall through. 

Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor 
to enrich, 

To fill up his life, starve my own out, I would — know- 
ing which, 

I know that my service is perfect. Oh, speak through 
me now ! 

Would I suffer for him that I love? So wouldst 
Thou — so wilt Thou! 

So shall crown Thee the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost 
crown — 

And Thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor 
down 

One spot for the creature to stand in ! It is by no 
breath, 

Turn of eye, wave of hand, that salvation joins issue 
with death ! 

As Thy Love is discovered almighty, almighty be 
proved 

Thy power, that exists with and for it, of being be- 
loved ! 

He who did most, shall bear most; the strongest shall 
stand the most weak. 



The Human Life of God 165 

*Tis the weakness in strength, that I cry for ! my flesh, 

that I seek 
In the Godhead! 1 seek and I find it. O Saul, it 

shall be 
A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like 

to me, 
Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever; a Hand 

like this hand 
Shall throw open the gates of new life to theel 

See the Christ standi" 



THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY IN 
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 



" But Thee, but Thee, O sovereign Seer of time. 
But Thee, O poets' Poet, Wisdom's Tongue, 
But Thee, O man's best Man, O love's best Love, 
O perfect life in perfect labour writ, 
O all men's Comrade, Servant, King, or Priest, — 
What ifov yet, what mole, what flaw, what lapse. 
What least defect or shadow of defect, 
What rumour, tattled by an enemy. 
Of inference loose, what lack of grace 
Even in torture's grasp, or sleep's, or death's, — 
Oh, what amiss may I forgive in Thee, 
Jesus, good Paragon, thou Crystal Christ ? " 

, — Sidney Lanier, The Crystal, 



THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY IN 
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

Preach Christ, is the apostolic watchword The new 
that rings to-day, with all the force and charm ^^^^^ 
of a new commandment, through the heart of 
a Church, which has felt, more deeply than it 
has yet confessed, the age-pervading chill of 
a winter of doubt and discontent. The very 
entrance of that mystic and reviving word has 
already brought a glow of enthusiasm into the 
Christian life, and caused new blossoms of hope 
and love, manifold and beautiful activities of 
help and healing, to appear in the earth. It 
seems as if some fresh and secret tide of vital- 
ity were flowing through the veins of Christen- 
dom, and breaking everywhere towards the 
light in deeds of charity and enterprises of 
mercy. Hospitals, asylums, red cross societies, 
rescue missions, salvation armies, spring into 
existence as if by magic. Never has there 
been a time when Christian men have tried to 

169 



170 The Source of Authority 

The new (Jq so mucli f OP their fellow-men in the name 

charity. ^ ^i 

and for the sake of Christ. Never has there 
been a time when they have recognized so 
clearly and fully that there was so much yet 
to be done. It is an age of secular doubt, as 
many other ages have been. But it is also an 
age of Christian beneficence, as hardly any 
other age has been. And this beneficence is 
not self-satisfied and complacent. It is self- 
reproachful, and, in its best expressions, nobly 
discontented with all that has been accom- 
plished hitherto. It seeks, not always wisely, 
but with splendid eagerness, for plans which 
shall lead beyond the relief, to the prevention 
of human suffering. It aims to bring about 
not only the immediate mitigation, but also the 
ultimate abolition, of war. It demands that 
charity shall be translated into the terms of 
national, as well as of individual life. It will 
not be satisfied until in some real and palpable 
sense the kingdom of this world is become the 
kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ.^ 
C'lrist is the Now this renewal, this splendid expansion of 
Christian activities, evident by many signs to 
all thoughtful observers, depends for its power 
and permanence upon the setting forth of 
Christ, vividly, personally, practically, as the 
1 Rev. xi.*15. 



fountain. 



The Source of Authority 171 

pattern of all virtue and the Prince of Peace 
among men. Tlie sense of absolute confidence 
in Him as the perfect example of goodness, and 
of thorough loyalty to Him as the Master of 
noble life, is the hidden reservoir of moral 
force. The organized charities of Christendom 
are the distributing system. Not more instant 
and more complete would be the water-famine 
on Manhattan Island if the great dam among 
the Croton hills were broken and all the lakes 
and streams dried up, than the drought that 
would fall upon the beneficence of the world if 
there were a sudden break in the reservoir of 
love and loyalty in Christian hearts to their 
moral Master, or a stoppage of the myriad and 
multiform feeders which keep it full by preach- 
ing Christ. 

But in all this renewal and expansion of what ^^« P^^^ ^f 
is well and proudly called practical Christianity, Christianity. 
there is, if I mistake not, a danger, or at least 
a serious possibility, of loss. The life of man 
is not only practical, it is also intellectual. His 
relations to his fellow-men are important, but 
his relation to truth is no less important. He 
cannot help acting ; neither can he help think- 
ing. When his thinking is divorced from his 
acting, when he has one standard for truth and 
a different standard for conduct, he is like a 



172 



The Source of Authority 



What does 
it mean 
to preach 
Christ? 



house divided against itself. If the Christian- 
ity of to-day, by dwelling exclusively or too 
much on the ethical side of the Gospel as a 
beautiful and beneficent rule of conduct illus- 
trated by a perfect Example, tends to ignore the 
intellectual necessities of man and fails to real- 
ize that it has a message to deliver in the realm 
of truth as well as in the realm of righteous- 
ness, it will not and it cannot meet the deepest 
wants of the present age. Indeed, it may even 
aggravate those wants and make them more 
painful. It may seem to give assent, by 
silence, to the desperate assumption of scepti- 
cism that the unseen world is unknown and 
unknowable, even to the most perfect of men. 
It may foster the sad feeling that the reality of 
religion is beyond our reach and that we must 
content ourselves with the convenient dreams 
of virtue. It may preach, in effect, a Christ 
whose character and conduct are to be accepted 
as infallible, but whose thoughts and convic- 
tions in regard to God and the soul and the 
future life are mere fallacies and illusions. 

Preach Christ.^ if it is to be a true watchword 
for our ministry to the present age, must be 
cleared and vivified and expanded in our con- 
sciousness. We must know what we mean by 
it, and we must try to know what we ought to 



The Source of Authonti/ 173 

mean. We must ask ourselves again and again 
whether the thing that we do mean is always 
quite, or even approximately, the thi-ng that we 
ought to mean wlien we use this precious and 
powerful phrase. It was commonly employed, 
say fifty years ago, to describe by way of dis- 
tinction a presentation of Jesus which dwelt 
chiefly or entirely upon His death as the vicari- 
ous sacrifice for sin. It is frequently employed 
now as if it meant little or nothing more than 
the graphic description of Christ's life and 
actions as the supreme type of virtue and love. 
But surely to preach Christ exclusively in either 
of these ways is to divide Him. It is not enough 
to have a Christocentric theology. It is not 
enough to have a Christocentric morality. We 
must not only put Him at the centre; but we 
must also draw the circumference so that it 
shall embrace the whole of human life. 

If Christ is the Lamb of God that taketh A gospel for 
away the sin of the world,i He is also the true ^^-^.^^g ^j- 
Light which lighteth every man that cometh human life. 
into the world. ^ If He is the fulfilment of all 
dim prophecies of good, He is also the head and 
source of a new unfolding of spiritual vision. 
If He is the way and the life, He is also the 
truth. 3 If He is immortal love, regenerating 

1 St. John i. 29. 2 st. John i. 9. 3 st. John xiv. 6. 



174 



The Source of Authority 



the affections, He is also immortal wisdom re- 
organizing the tlioughts, and immortal power 
strengthening the wills, of men. If His heart 
is to be the norm of our feeling. His mind is 
to be the norm of our thinking. If He is the 
herald and founder of a new and celestial 
dominion upon earth, He is also the source of 
authority in the kingdom of heaven. 



The king- 
dom of 

heaven the 
keynote of 
Christ's 
teaching. 



The idea of the kingdom of heaven, as an act- 
ual reign of God over living men, in which all 
ancient anticipations of good are accomplished 
and a new state of virtue and blessedness is es- 
tablished on earth, was foremost and dominant 
in the teaching of Jesus. ^ It was the keynote 
of His ministry. Everything that He said, 
everything that He did, was in harmony with 
this master thought. 

It is passing strange to see how often and 
how utterly this keynote has been changed in 
the variations which men have woven about the 

1 The word "kingdom " is used in tlie Gospels more than 
a hundred times to express the new condition of human life 
which Christ came to announce and establish. In St, 
Matthew's Gospel the favourite phrase is "the kingdom of 
heaven." St. Mark and St. Luke use "the kingdom of 
God." 



The Source of Authority 175 

original theme of Christicanity ; and how far -^a^^« inter* 
f. , . •,11 1 pretations. 

we are, even yet, irom hearing it clearly, and 

sounding it with dominant fulness, in the 
music of religion. At times the kingdom of 
heaven has been identified with the visible 
church as an outward embodiment of power in 
the world. And surely this interpretation is 
far enough away from the thought of Christ, 
who taught expressly that the kingdom was 
invisible and inward. At other times men have 
removed their conception from the present to 
the future, and looked for its realization in the 
life of the redeemed after death, or in the second 
coming of Christ to reign in millennial glory. 
And surely this interpretation is equally remote 
from Christ's teaching, at the very outset of His 
ministry and all through its course, that the 
kingdom of heaven was at hand, that it had 
already come near to men, and was lying all 
around them, close to them, pressing upon them 
from every side so that many were already en- 
tering into it and dwelling within it. 

The unreality and incompleteness of these The idea 

, 'I. • J. J.X* i!j.ii'j almost lost 

tAvo opposite interpretations oi the kingdom 
produced their natural results. The idea fell 
out of its true place in Christian thought. It 
became obscure, subordinate, and was finally 



176 The Source of Authority 

almost obliterated. No further illustration of 
this statement is necessary than that which 
may be obtained by consulting one of the most 
popular aids to the study of the Bible : Talbot's 
Analysis^ revised by the Rev. Nathaniel West, 
and again revised by the Rev. Dr. Roswell D. 
Hitchcock, and set forth under the title of A 
Complete Analysis of the Holy Bible; or^ the 
Whole Bible arranged in Subjects.^ In the in- 
dex to this work there is but one solitary 
reference to the kingdom of God. When we 
turn to look at it, we find eleven verses, under 
the heading of " The Millennium ; the Growth of 
the Kingdom of God." The kingdom of heaven 
is dismissed with a general reference to the 
Parables. To any one who is really familiar 
with his New Testament, the insufficiency of 
such a treatment of one of its controlling ideas 
must appear evident and surprising. 
The idea But it may be said that in very recent times 

begins to be ,-i it, • j. • i x • j. i. • 

^^ -. there has been an intense revival oi interest m 

restored. 

this idea and an immense amount of good work 
done in the study and explication of it. This 
is true and it should be gratefully recognized. 
Such books as those which Dr. James S. Cand- 
lish and Professor A. B. Bruce have written 

1 Wilmore's New Analytical Beference Bible (New York, 
1891). 



The Source of Authority 177 

upon " The Kingdom of God/' are most valua- 
ble gifts to Christian literature.^ And yet I 
will frankly confess that these books, and others 
like them, seem to me rather to point the way 
than to reach the goal. The fulness of the 
conception of the kingdom of heaven is not 
yet restored in current theology. Its regnancy 
in all spheres of human life is not yet com- 
pletely rounded. There is still a great deal 
of work to be done in this direction by the 
Christian thinker and the Christian preacher. 
The vision of the kingdom is obscured, the 
proclamation of the kingdom is weakened, be- 
cause it is still presented too exclusively as 
a kingdom of grace, and not with equal em- 
phasis as a kingdom of truth : it is set up too 
jDartially as a standard for the character and 
conduct of men, and not with equal clearness 
as a standard for their thoughts and convic- 
tions. 

One reason of this one-sidedness, it seems to it ^W5« he 
xne, lies in the fact that we have hitherto been all/our 
looking almost entirely to the first three Gos- Gospels, 
pels as the source of our knowledge of the true 

1 The Kingdom of God, Biblically and Historically Con- 
sidered, James S. Candlisli (Edinburgh, Clarks, 1884). The 
Kingdom of God, or Chrisfs Teaching according to the 
Synoptical Gospels, Alexander Balmain Bruce (New York, 
Scribners, 1889). 



178 The Source of Authority 

meaning of the kingdom of heaven. But the 
Fourth Gospel, if indeed it be, as the best 
modern scholars say it is, "the most faithful 
image and memorial of Jesus that any man 
could produce," must be no less important, no 
less significant in the light which it throws 
upon this controlling idea of His mind. And 
when we turn to study it with this aim in view, 
we find at once that it gives us what we need. 
It completes and rounds out the record of the 
three other Gospels. It answers the ques- 
tions which they suggest. It keeps the prom- 
ises which they seem to make to our faith. 
And it is only when we take the fourfold 
narrative in its entirety that we begin to catch 
sight of the satisfying and convincing fulness 
of the idea of the kingdom of heaven. 
The king- This idea underlies the whole Gospel accord- 

st. John. i^g ^^ ^^- John. It is no less fundamental, no 
less necessary here than it is in the Synoptic 
Gospels. It is presented in different forms, 
because the type of the writer's mind and the 
purpose of his book are different. But it is 
the same idea. And this presentation of it is 
essential to its completeness. 

In the Synoptics we have the conditions of 
entrance into the kingdom, a child-like spirit,^ 
1 St. Matt, xviii. 3. 



The Source of Authority 179 

faith,^ repentance,^ and obedience.^ In St. John Compared 
we have the spiritual birth by which alone synoptics. 
those requisites are made possible.* In the 
Synoptics we have the laws of the kingdom.^ 
In St. John we have the new life in which 
alone those laws can be fulfilled.^ In the 
Synoptics we have the parables and pictures 
of the kingdom." In St. John we have the 
inmost sense of those parables, spoken directly 
to the soul, in words of which Christ Himself 
says "they are spirit, and they are life."^ In 
the Synoptics we have the new order of human 
society in the imitation by the disciples of 
Christ's obedience to the will of God.^ In St. 
John we have the organizing principle of that 
new order in Christ's revelation of Himself to 
the disciples as the way, the truth, and the 
life.^^ In the Synoptics we have the supremacy 
of Christ's example over men's hearts. In St. 
John we have the supremacy of Christ's teach- 
ings over men's minds. 

Of course, I do not mean to say that either 

1 St. Matt. ix. 22 ; St. Mark ^ gt^ Matt, xiii., xxi., xxv. ; 
X. 52. St. Luke xiii,, xvii., xix., 

* St. Luke xiii. 3. etc. 

3 St. Matt. V. 20. 8 St. John vi. 63; viii. 12-51. 

* St. John iii. 5. » St. Matt. xii. 50. 
^ The Sermon on the Mount. ^'^ St. John xiv. 6. 

6 St. John vl. 22-65. 



180 The Source of Authority 

Both views of these aspects of the kingdom is confined ex- 

necessary. 

clusively to the source in which it is most fully 

and clearly exhibited.^ But this is what I 
mean. The Synoptics give us the first and 
simplest description of the nature of the king- 
dom. St. John gives us the fullest and clear- 
est revelation of the mind of the King. We 
cannot understand the former without the lat- 
ter. We cannot enter into the full meaning 
of the initial proclamation of Jesus, when He 
walked beside the Sea of Galilee crying " The 
kingdom of heaven has come near," ^ unless we 
go on with Him to the judgment-hall, and hear 
Him give His final answer to Pilate : " Thou 
sayest that I am a King ; to this end have I 
been born, and to this end am I come into the 
world, that I should bear witness unto the 
truth ; every one that is of the truth heareth 
my voice." ^ 

When we stand at this point, when we ac- 
cept this declaration as the key to unlock and 
open the inmost meaning of the manifestation 
of the Father in the human life of the Son, we 

1 See Bruce, The Kingdom of God, p. 185, on the personal 
claim of Christ in the Synoptics. See R. F. Horton, The 
Teaching of Jesus (New York, 1896), pp. 219-233, on relation 
between Synoptic doctrine of the kingdom and Johannine 
doctrine of eternal life. 

2 St. Matt. iv. 17. 3 St. John xviii. 37. 



The Source of Authority 181 

begin to apprehend the inexhaustible scope and ^''^ ^'"""5'- 

\ ^^^ ' dom of truth 

signincance of our call to preach Christ to an ^^^ ^^^n ^^ ^j 
age of doubt. It is a gospel not only for the 9^<i<^^' 
affections, but also for the intellect. It takes 
up His words as well as His works and makes 
them vital in the lives of men. It conceives 
and proclaims the kingdom of heaven as some- 
thing more than " the reign of divine love ex- 
ercised by God in His grace over human hearts 
believing in His love and constrained thereby 
to yield Him grateful affection and devoted 
service."^ It is also the reign of divine truth 
exercised through a faithful witness over the 
minds of men who submit to His guidance and 
are led by Him into inward peace and unity of 
thought. And the source of authority in this 
kingdom of heaven, which is equally a realm of 
truth and a realm of grace, is Jesus the Christ, 
whose doctrine, as well as His example, is ulti- 
mate and supreme. 

n 

Let us observe in passing that we have pre- TTie King li 
cisely the same basis to rest upon in our preach- 
ing of the doctrine of Jesus as in our preaching 
of His character and life. If historical criticism 
1 Bruce, The Kingdom of God, p. 46. 



182 The Source of Authority 

gives us good reason to believe, as all candid 
inquirers now admit, that the four Gospels con- 
tain a veritable picture of an actual personage 
who once lived on earth, there is equally good 
reason to believe that they have preserved for 
us a trustworthy account of His teaching in its 
substance and spirit. If we can justly claim 
The doctrine that His character is so perfect and transcen- 
dent that no man of that age, however gifted or 
learned, and least of all such men as the writers 
of the New Testament, could possibly have in- 
vented it ; we can make the same claim, with 
equal justice, for the body of doctrine which 
is attributed to Christ. In its coherence, its 
clarity, its sublimity, and its universality it 
altogether surpasses the mental abilities and 
the religious insight of the writers of the four 
Gospels. Indeed, it is frankly confessed that 
the disciples of Jesus were so far from being 
able to invent His doctrine, that they actually 
misunderstood and misinterpreted many of its 
truths when they first heard them. It was 
contrary to their prejudices and expectations. 
They did not put it into His mouth. He re- 
vealed it to their minds. Their faith in it 
rested upon His personal authority. And it 
was only as they kept company with Him 
and followed Him, receiving His word into 



The Source of Authority 183 

their souls and translating it into their lives, 
that it became to them luminous and satisfy- 
ing and convincing. 

We are entitled, or rather we are compelled, ^^ objective 

reality. 

to regard the teaching of Jesus as an objective 
fact just as much as His life and character. 
The record of it bears on its face the over- 
whelming evidence of verity. All the results 
of literary criticism are squarely against the 
supposition that such a doctrine as that which 
is presented to . us under His name in the four 
Gospels, could ever have been pieced together 
out of the thoughts and imaginations of widely 
separated and divergent minds, and attributed 
to an unknown and perhaps mythical Master. 
It is not a mosaic ; it is a living unity. It is 
not a creation of faith ; it is the creator of faith. 
The hypothesis that four men agreed, or hap- 
pened, to gather together out of the Hebrew 
prophets, and the heathen philosophers, and the 
mysterious and inexplicable inner conscious- 
ness of the new-born Christian churches, cer- 
tain beautiful ideas in regard to God and the 
soul and the future life, and ascribe them to 
Jesus, utterly breaks down at the touch of real- 
ity. The central, unifying, formative quality 
of the teaching of Christ is the one thing that 



184 The Source of Authority 

is most evident in the record. It is empha- 
sized by all the phenomena of growth, of vital 
development, of deepening power, which may 
be traced from the sermon in the synagogue 
at Nazareth to the discourse in the upper room 
at Jerusalem. It shines out unmistakably 
through all the living variety of impressions 
which it made upon various minds, and 
through all the consequent many-sidedness of 
the report which is given of it. Not more 
certainly did the character of Christ inspire 
and unite the lives of His followers than 
His doctrine illuminated and controlled their 
beliefs. The only view which meets the facts 
is that Jesus really lived, and really taught, 
thus and so, as He is presented to us in the 
Gospels. 
The form of This brings us at once to the most important 
feature in the record of His teaching. It is not 
given to us in the form of an abstract system, 
a treatise on theology, or a summary of doc- 
trine, written down by the hand of Jesus. He 
Himself made no record of His words. Only 
once do we see Him writing, — in the beautiful 
episode which a later tradition has added to the 
eighth chapter of St. John's Gospel. Histori- 
cal or not, the incident is profoundly sugges- 
tive. For Jesus wrote not with a pen upon 



The Source of AuOwrity 185 

enduring parchment, nor with a stylus upon 

imperishable brass : 

" He stooped 
And wrote upon the itnrecording ground." ^ 

He Avould not leave even a single line of manu- 
script where His followers could preserve it 
with literal reverence and worship it as a 
sacred relic. He chose to inscribe His teach- 
ing upon no other leaves than those which are 
folded within the human soul. He chose to 
trust His words to the faithful keeping of 
memory and love ; and He said of them, with 
sublime confidence, that they should never pass 
away. 2 He chose that the truth which He 
declared and the life which He lived should 
never be divided, but that they should go down 
together through the ages. 

And this is precisely what has come to pass, inseparable 
The Church in past ages has often been inclined -^^^"^ ^^^^ 

, ... character. 

to abstract the doctrines of Christianity concern- 
ing the person and work of Christ from their 
union with His human life, and to condense 
them into a purely formal system of dogma for 
the intellect. The Church in the present age 
shows at least a tendency to separate the image 

1 Katrina Trask, "A Night and Morning in Jerusalem" 
{Harper'' s Magazine^ April, 1896). 

2 St. Markxiii. 31. 



186 The Source of Authority 

of Jesus from the truths which He taught, and 
hold Him up to men merely as an ideal of holi- 
ness and goodness. But the one barrier that 
stands firm against both these false tendencies 
is the marvellous narrative of the Gospels, in 
which the life and the doctrine of Christ are 
woven together, one and inseparable, like a 
robe without seam. 
Words and How can we understand His grace, unless we 
each other, accept His truth ? How can we appreciate His 
truth, unless we receive His grace ? At every 
step. His action is interpreted and explained by 
His words. He trusts in Providence, and He 
commands His disciples to trust, not merely be- 
cause submissive confidence is a beautiful and 
happy thing, but because He knows and declares 
that God is really a Father, worthy to be trusted.^ 
He prays, secretly and openly; secretly because 
He is sure that God hears Him always, and 
openly because He would fain give this as- 
surance to others.^ He seeks the sinful and 
the lost, not merely because such a ministry is 
lovely and gracious, but because He knows and 
declares that it is the will of God, and that 
there is more joy in heaven over one sinner 
that repenteth than over ninety-and-nine just 

1 St. Matt. vi. 25-30. 2 gt. John xi. 41, 42. 



The Source of Authority 187 

men that need no repentance.^ He cares for 
the bodies of men and He relieves their wants, 
but He cares infinitely more for their souls and 
He teaches them to care more, because He 
knows that the soul is capable of immortality 
and more precious than all that this world can 
give. 2 He moves willingly and obediently to 
the cross, not because it is inevitable, not be- 
cause resignation is the crown of virtue, but 
because He knows and declares that this is the 
sacrifice appointed for Him as the Christ, the 
laying down of His life as a ransom for many, 
the lifting up by which He is to draw all men 
unto Himself. 3 He goes down into death with 
unshaken courage, not because it is a fine thing 
to be brave, but because He knows and declares 
that He is returning to the Father and that He 
will bring those who love Him to be with Him 
where He is forever.* 

Now these are declarations of great truths. The doctrine 

X p 1 .1 • r. 1 J 1 , ' of Christ the 

It we deny them, it we make them uncertain, lasiso/ms 
the life which was built upon them has no conduct. 
meaning, no substance, no power in it. It be- 
comes a splendid illusion, a heroic mistake. 

1 St. Luke XV. 7. 

2 St. John vi. 27; St. Mark viii. 36, 37. 

8 St. Mark ix 12 ; St. Matt. xx. 28 ; St. John xii. 32. 
4 St. John xiv. 1-3. 



188 The Source of Authority 

But if we accept them, then, and only then, 
that life becomes the rock of our confidence, 
the substance of things hoped for and the evi- 
dence of things not seen.^ For it was on the 
knowledge of these things that Jesus actually 
founded His own character and His conduct. 
It was by believing thus and so, and by living 
up to His belief, that He was made perfect. 
And it was by teaching His disciples to believe 
thus and so that He would bind them to follow 
His example and inspire them to share His life. 
" Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine and 
doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man 
which built his house upon a rock."^ "Now 
ye are clean through the word which I have 
spoken unto you." "If ye abide in me, and 
my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye 
will and it shall be done unto you."^ 



1 ' ' Nicht das Leben Jesu an sich in seinem geschiclitliclien 
Verlaufe, sondern die Auffassung der religiosen Bedeutung 
desselben, auf welche die alteste N. T. liche Verkundigung 
ruht, bildet den Ausgangspunkt fur die bibliscbe Theologie. 
Diese Auffassung war aber zunaclist bedingt durch die Lebre 
Jesu, sofern dieselbe die authentiscbe Erlauterung iiber die 
Bedeutung seiner Person und seiner Erscbeinung gab, und 
daber muss eine Darstellung dieser Lebre den grundlegenden 
Abscbnitt der bibliscben Theologie bilden." — Bbrnhard 
Weiss, Lehrbuch der Biblischen Theologie des Neuen Testa- 
ments (2te Auflage, Berlin, 1873), p. 31. 

2 St. Matt. vii. 24. 3 St. Jobn xv. 3, 7. 



The Source of Authority 189 

m 

The importance which Christ ascribed to Tiie 
His words as the authoritative revelation of ^^y^- (j^j^i^^^^ 
unseen verities to the confused and darkened teaching. 
minds of men, cannot be denied or overlooked 
by any one who reads the Gospels candidly and 
intelligently. It is true, indeed, that He ex- 
pressly disclaimed the idea that His doctrine 
was created, or invented, or even discovered by 
Himself. He said, "My doctrine is not mine 
but His that sent me," ^ "All things that I 
have heard of my Father I have made known 
unto you. "2 But it is equally true that He 
claimed an absolute infallibility for the mes- 
sage which was revealed in Him, committed 
unto Him, and delivered by Him. This claim 
is made with equal force in the Synoptics and 
in St. John. " No one knoweth who the Son 
is, save the Father; and who the Father is, 
save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son 
willeth to reveal Him."^ " We speak that we 
do know, and bear witness of that we have 
seen."* This is not the language that an 
honest and conscientious teacher would use to 
describe his religious opinions or his spiritual 

1 St. John vii. 16. » St. Luke x. 22. 

2 St. John XV. 15. 4 St. John iii. 11. 



190 The Source of Authority 

hopes. The wisest and the best of men have 
always hesitated to assume this tone of cer- 
tainty in regard to their deepest reflections 
upon the mysteries of being. But from first 
to last this tone marks the teaching of Jesus. 
" They were astonished at His teaching ; for 
He taught them as having authority, and not 
as the scribes."^ 
■^**« It is evident that He intended to speak thus. 

For nothing is more striking in the manner of 
His teaching than the absence of all reliance 
upon corroborative testimony or traditional 
support. 2 He did not seek to defend His posi- 
tions with a formidable array of great names. 
He did not make a long catena of quotations 
from learned sources. He gave out His doc- 
trine from the depth of His own consciousness 
as a flower breathes perfume, fresh, pure, origi- 
nal, and convincing. He certainly felt a Divine 
inspiration in the ancient Hebrew Scriptures. 
The law and the prophets conveyed to Him the 

1 St. Mark i. 22. 

2 " Avec une certitude sereine, qui ne semble pas terrestre, 
il disait ces choses. II chantait, comme aucun propli6te 
n'avait su le faire, le chant des revoirs Eternals qui a berc6 
pendant des si^cles les souffrances et les agonies. Et ce 
chant-1^, voici que de nos jours, au triste d^clin des temps, 
les hommes se meurent de ne plus I'entendre." — Pierke 
LoTi, La Galilee (Paris, 1896), p. 94. 



The Source of Authority 191 

word of God. He used them on certain occa- 
sions to repel the assaults of evil, as in the temp- 
tation in the wilderness. He used them on other 
occasions to convince and convict the Scribes 
and Pharisees out of their own Scriptures. 
But He never rested upon them as the sole and 
sufficient basis of His doctrine. He was not a 
commentator on truths already revealed. He ^^^^^ 

revelation 

was a revealer of new truth. His teaching was 
not the exposition ; it was the text. And this 
higher revelation not only fulfilled, but also 
surpassed, the old ; replacing the temporal by 
the eternal, the figurative by the factual, the 
literal by the spiritual, the imperfect by the 
perfect. How often Jesus quoted from the Old 
Testament in order to show that it was al- 
ready old and insufficient ; that its forms of 
speech and rules of conduct were like the husk 
of the seed which must be shattered by the 
emergence of the living germ. His doctrine 
was in fact a moral and intellectual day- 
break for the world. He did far more than 
supply a novel system of conduction for an 
ancient light. He sent forth from Himself a 
new illumination, transcending all that had 
gone before, as the sunrise overfloods the pale 
glimmering of the morning star set like a 
beacon of promise upon the coast of dawn. 



192 The Source of Authority 

It is self- He did not rely upon reasoning for the proof 

evidencing. i • tt j • i 

01 His doctrine. He put no trust m the com- 
pulsion of logic, in the keenness of dialectics. 
We look in vain among His words for an 
exhibition of the "evidences of Christianity.'* 
He did not endeavour to demonstrate the ex- 
istence of God or the immortality of the soul. 
What He said was meant to be its own evi- 
dence. His method was not apologetic ; it 
was declaratory. 

" He argued not, but preached, and conscience did the rest." 

The result of this is marvellous and magnifi- 
cent. His teaching is cleared and disentangled 
from all that is temporary and transient in 
human thought. If He had reasoned with 
men, it must have been done upon the prem- 
isses and in the forms of philosophy current 
in that age. Otherwise He could not have 
reached their intelligence, His reasoning would 
have been of none effect. But because He 
passed by all these processes and left them on 
one side while His doctrine moved simply, di- 
rectly, and majestically to the heart of the truth, 
it comes to us to-day free and unencumbered 
by any of those theories of physical science, of 
psychology, of political economy, which the 
growth of knowledge has changed, discredited. 



The Source of Authority 193 

or discarded. His teaching is neither ancient ^^ ^'« "^i- 
nor modern, neither deductive nor inductive, 
neither Jewish nor Greek. It is universal, 
enduring, valid for all minds and for all times. 
There are no more difficulties in the way of 
accepting it now than there were when it was 
first delivered. It fits the spiritual needs of 
the nineteenth, as closely as it fitted the 
spiritual needs of the first, century. It car- 
ries the same attractions, the same credentials 
in the Western Hemisphere as it carried in 
the Eastern. It stands out as clearly from all 
the later, as it did from all the earlier, pkiloso- 
phies. It finds the soul as inevitably to-day 
as it did at first. And the men of this age 
who hear Christ can only say, as His disciples 
said long ago, *' Lord, to whom shall we go ? 
Thou hast the words of eternal life."^ 

And yet how few are those words, compared i^ ^'« s"^a^^ 
with the utterances of other teachers. How 
small in compass is the doctrine of Jesus as it 
has come down to us. Eighty pages of a duo- 
decimo book will hold all of His recorded dis- 
courses and the story of His life. Other words 
He must have spoken while He was on earth, 
but I doubt not that they moved within the 
same circle. For even in the present record 
1 St. Jolin vi. 68. 
o 



194 The Source of Authority 

we find the same truths recurring again and 
again, expressed in different language, arranged 
in different sequence, as the evangelists re- 
trace, each from his own point of view, the 
memory of the things which Jesus taught to 
the multitudes and to His disciples. The lit- 
erature of the world holds no other doctrine 
so limited in bulk, so limitless in meaning. 

itsfontal The teaching of Christ differs from that of 

all other masters in its fontal quality. It is 
comprised in a little space, but it has an infi- 
nite fulness. Its utterance is closely bounded, 
but i*s significance is inexhaustible. The 
sacred books of other religions, the commen- 
taries and expositions on the Christian religion, 
spread before us a vast and intricate expanse, 
like lakes of truth mixed with error, stretch- 
ing away into the distance, arm after arm, 
bay after bay, until we despair of being able 
even to explore their coasts and trace their 
windings. When we come back to Christ, we 
find, not an inland sea of doctrine, but a clear 
fountain of living water, springing up into 
everlasting life. 

An unfaii- Calm, pure, unfathomable, it is never clouded 
and it never fails. The inspiration of other 
teachers rises and falls like an intermittent 
spring. To-day it is brimming full ; to-mor- 



ing source. 



The Source of Authority 195 

row it is empty and dry. But the truth that 
flows from Jesus is constant and unvarying. 
The Spirit always rests upon Him. The 
Father is always with Him. Out of the deep 
serenity of His soul, as from some secret vale 
of peace high among the eternal hills, the vital 
spring of truth wells up forever, and forever 
the crystal stream runs down to refresh and 
revive the souls of men. 

New meanings come out of the teaching of Always 
Jesus in every land and in every age. New 
stars are mirrored in its depths. New flowers 
blossom on its banks. New fields of love are 
fertilized by its waters. It is not that each 
succeeding century and race adds something of 
its own to the doctrine of Christ. It is that 
each finds in that source something which was 
meant to become its own, and so to satisfy its 
deepest needs. The old questions are repeated 
in new words, and the new ansAver comes in the 
old words. ^ The truth as it is in Jesus does 
not have to be changed and adapted to fit it for 
a world-wide missionary enterprise. It needs 
only to be purified from the things that men 

1 "Socrates asked questions which his disciples tried to 
answer ; Jesiis provoked His disciples to ask questions which 
He answered." — James Stalker, Imago Christi (New York, 
Armstrongs, 1889), p. 270. 



196 The Source of Authority 

have mingled with it, restored to the simplicity 
that is in Christ, and it proves itself as fresh, as 
satisfying, as life-bestowing to the thirsty soul 
in America or in the islands of the sea, as it did 
in Galilee or on the hillsides of Judea. 
The Sim- When we ask ourselves why it is that the 

is in Christ, doctrine of the Master has this enduring, self- 
renewing, fontal character, I think we must 
find the answer in the fact that it simply bears 
witness, with a directness and inevitableness 
altogether unparalleled, to the actual existence 
of a spiritual world corresponding to the spirit- 
ual faculties and aspirations of men. It does 
not turn aside to discuss metaphysical problems 
or theological subtleties. The distinction be- 
tween the natural and the supernatural does not 
even appear in the teaching of Jesus. There 
may, or there may not, be such a distinction. 
If there is. He at least does not think it impor- 
tant enough to speak of it. The one thing of 
which He wishes to make men sure is that the 
same God who sends His sunshine and His rain 
upon the evil and upon the good, the same God 
whose bounty feeds the birds of the air and 
clothes the lilies of the field with beauty, hears 
in secret the prayers of the penitent and believ- 
ing and rewards them openly. The question 
of the how and the where of the life after death 



The Source of Authority 197 

is not even touched in the teaching of Jesus. 
It matters little. The one thing that He de- 
clares with unfaltering certainty is the reality 
of that life. The one thing that He presses 
liome upon the minds of men with calm inten- 
sity is the danger of losing it through sin and 
unbelief. The one thing that He tenderly and 
urgently pleads with them to do, is to make 
sure of its immortal blessedness through faith 
and love and obedience to Him. And so, at 
every point, He passes by the non-essential to 
touch the essential, He disregards the passing 
curiosity to satisfy the real anxiety. He neglects 
the shadows to reveal the substance of the 
unseen world. 

Teaching like this is the only kind of teach- Words of 
ing that will always renew itself, always have 
something more to bestow upon us. It cannot 
grow obsolete. It cannot be drained of its sig- 
nificance. It is like life. Nay, it is life, and it 
gives life. 

rv 

Let us understand, then, that if our Christi- Loyalty to 
anity is to satisfy our whole nature, if it is to fQacMng 
have its real and full meaning, and power to 
bring in the kingdom of heaven, it must in- 
clude this element. We must be as loyal to 



198 The Source of Authority 

the teaching of Jesus as we are to His example. 
We must count no pains too great to spend 
upon the study of that teaching as it lies in 
the records, and no effort too severe to make 
in order that it may be restored in its integ- 
rity and entirety, rounded and harmonized, 
within the very centre of our minds. And 
then we must preach it, simply, sincerely, cer- 
tainly, as the only doctrine which can lead 
men out of the intellectual anarchy of doubt 
into the peaceful realm of truth. 
The age This is what the age is looking and longing 

authority. ^^^' ^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^ ]^J ^^ ^^® kingdom of 
heaven unless it finds there a source of author- 
ity for the mind as well as for the heart. Au- 
thority is what the sociologist demands, in order 
that he may have a sure basis for the precepts 
of altruism. Authority is what the philosopher 
seeks, in order that he may have a fixed point 
of departure and certain limits of speculation. 
Authority is what the poet craves, as he clings 

to 

" The truths that never can be proved, 

Until we close with all we loved 
And all we flow from, soul in soul." ^ 

Men are crying lo here ! and lo there ! We 
must find the source of authority in an in- 

1 Tennyson, In Memoriam. 



The Source of Authority 199 

errant Book, or in an enlightened reason, or 
in an infallible Church, or perhaps in all three ; 
as if there could be three sources of one author- 
ity, or as if a channel could ever be rightly 
called a source! Let us not hesitate to pass 
through this confusion of tongues and of ideas, 
serene and untroubled, with the message of a 
more excellent way. 

Christ is the Light of all Scripture. Christ ^^'^^^ ^'« i^e 
is the Master of holy reason. Christ is the authority 
sole Lord and Life of the true Church. By 
His word we test all doctrines, conclusions, 
and commands. On His word we build all 
faith. This is the source of authority in the 
kingdom of heaven. Let us neither forget 
nor hesitate to appeal to it always with un- 
trembling certainty and positive conviction. 
If Christ did not know and preach the truth, 
then there is no truth that can be known or 
preached. Unless we are sure of this, we 
would better go out of business entirely. It 
is inconceivable that the loftiest character in 
history should be the most mistaken man that 
^ver thought about the real basis and meaning 
of life. It is incredible that the noblest life 
in the world should be founded upon a faith 
that was vain. It is impossible that a supreme 
devotion and a real likeness to Christ should 



200 The Source of Authority 

have been produced and perpetuated in the 
world without a veritable apprehension of that 
which He knew and taught concerning God 
and man. 
Our great Xo have this apprehension clearly formed 

ten sA* /o 1 PCiT^yh 

His creed. within US must be our ardent and joyful intel- 
lectual endeavour. We are not to rest content 
with the study of single words and separate 
phrases. The limitations of language, the con- 
ditions of transmission, will always expose us 
to error if we follow that course. The truth 
as it is in Jesus does not lie in fragments, but in 
the rounded whole. We must get back to 
the unity and integrity of the thoughts of 
Jesus, the creed of Christ. The broad outline 
of His vision of things human and divine, the 
central verities which appear firm and un- 
changeable in all the reports of His teaching, 
the point of view from which He discerned 
and interpreted the mystery of life, — that is 
what we must seek. And when we find it, 
we must take our stand there as men who feel 
the solid ground beneath their feet. Illustra- 
tions and confirmations we may gather from 
science and history and philosophy. But the 
rock of certainty is the mind of Jesus, ex- 
pressed in His living words and in His speak- 



The Source of Authority 201 

iug life. Beyond tliis we need not and we 
cannot go. Here is the ultimatum. This is 
tlie truth, we say to men, because Jesus knew 
it, and said it, and lived it. 

But one thing we may not, we dare not, for- We must 
get. ilie condition ot apprehending, and how ^^ A:noM; ^is 
much more of preaching, the truth revealed by doctrine. 
Christ is that we abide in Him. The word of 
Jesus in the mind of one who does not do the 
will of Jesus, lies like seed-corn in a mummy's 
hand. It is only by dwelling with Him and 
receiving His character. His personality so 
profoundly, so vitally that it shall be with us 
as if, in His own words, we had partaken of 
His flesh and His blood, as if His sacred 
humanity had been interwoven with the very 
fibres of our heart and pulsed with secret power 
in all our veins, — it is thus only that we can 
be enabled to see His teaching as it is, and set 
it forth with luminous conviction to the souls 
of men. 

And if ever we ourselves become afraid of Return to 
our own task, and shrink from it ; if the scep- 
ticism of our age appalls us and chills us to the 
very marrow ; if we question whether a gospel 
so simple, so absolute, as that which is com- 
mitted to us can find acceptance in such a 
world, at such a time as this, — be "sure it is 



202 The Source of Authority 

because we have gotten out of fellowship with 
Him who is our Peace and our Hope, our Light 
and our Strength. A Christless man can never 
preach Christ. We have been anxious and 
troubled about many things, and have forgot- 
ten the one thing needful. Peace we must have 
before we can have power. Let us straight- 
way return, in prayer, in meditation, in trust, 
in faithful simple-hearted obedience, to Him 
who is the only centre of Peace because He is 
the only source of authority. 

" I have a life in Christ to live, 

But ere I live it must I wait 
Till learning can clear answer give 

Of this and that book's date ? 
I have a life in Christ to live, 

I have a death in Christ to die ; — 
And must I wait till science give 

All doubts a full reply? 

Nay, rather, while the sea of doubt 

Is raging wildly round about, 

Questioning of life and death and sin, 

Let me but creep within 

Thy fold, O Christ, and at Thy feet 

Take but the lowest seat, 

And hear Thine awful voice repeat 

In gentlest accents, heavenly sweet, 

Come unto Me and rest ; 

Believe Me, and be blest." ^ 

1 John Campbell Shairp. 



VI 

LIBERTY 



" But, perfect in every part, 

Has the potter's moulded shape 
Leap of man's quickened heart, 

Throe of his thought's escape. 
Stings of his soul which dart 

" Through the barrier of flesh, till keen 
She climbs from the calm and clear 

Through turbidity all between 

From the known to the unknown here. 

Heaven's ' Shall be,' from Earth's ' Has been'? 

" Then life is — to wake and not sleep. 
Rise and not rest, but press 
From earth's level where blindly creep 

Things perfected, more or less. 
To the heaven's height, far and steep, 

" Where, amid what strifes and storms 

May wait the adventurous quest, 
Power is Love — transports, transforms 

Who aspired from worst to best. 
Sought the soul's world, spurned the worms.' " 

— Robert Browning, Reverie. 



VI 

LIBERTY 

There are three points at which the teach- Three great 
ing of Jesus comes into closest contact with the 
needs of the present age. Three problems of 
profound difficulty are pressing to-day upon all 
thoughtful men: the psychological problem of 
the freedom of the will; the theological prob- 
lem of the actual relation of God to the uni- 
verse ; and the moral problem of man's duty 
to his fellow-men in a world of inequality. 
Out of the depths of these problems dark and 
multitudinous doubts are forever rising, like 
the clouds of smoke and steam which issue from 
the labouring bosom of Vesuvius, while sub- 
terranean thunder is muttering and rolling 
underneath. Most of the intellectual perplex- 
ities and practical perils of our times come 
directly from these questions, to which modern 
scepticism gives an answer of despair, or at 
best only a dubious and uncertain reply. 

But the gospel of Christ, rightly appre- 
hended and interpreted, offers us a solution 

205 



206 



Liberty 



erty, sover- 
eignty, and 
service. 



Three great of tliese problems which is full of light and 
hope and moral certainty. There is a breath 
of the Spirit in His teaching, pure and strong, 
pouring like a clean wind out of heaven, to 
scoff away the obscuring vapours, and reveal the 
changeless verities and glories of the spiritual 
landscape. Three truths emerge in His doc- 
trine, and stand out clear and sharp as moun- 
tain peaks against the blue : the truth of 
human liberty, the truth of Divine sovereignty, 
and the truth of universal service. Of these 
three truths we must never lose sight, if our 
thinking is to be in accordance with the mind 
of Jesus. To these three truths we must bear 
witness, unhesitatingly, faithfully, and joy- 
fully, if our preaching is to be a gospel for 
this age of doubt. 



Modern fa- 
talism. 



No one who has looked steadily upon the 
face of modern life as it is reflected in popular 
literature can doubt that it is " sicklied o'er " 
with the dark shadow of fatalism. It is evident 
in the writings of the learned and in the scrib- 
blings of the ignorant. Everywhere there is a 
tendency to explain the whole life of man as 
the product of heredit} and environment. The 
student of physiology, ti cing the strange and 



Liberty 207 

subtle correspondence between the processes of 
consciousness and the changes and movements 
of the nervous system, makes the enormous 
assumption that the correspondence amounts to 
identity. All the hopes and fears, all the affec- 
tions and aspirations, which glorify this mortal 
life, are in their last analysis the result of cer- 
tain puckerings and tintinnabulations of the 
gray matter of the nerves. The actions which 
flow from them are as necessary as the fall of 
an apple when the stem is broken. The caress 
which a mother gives to her child, and the blow 
with which a murderer strikes his victim dead, 
are equally automatic and inevitable. They are 
the motions of delicately constructed puppets, 
and the triumph of modern investigation is the 
discovery of the string which moves them and 
the forces which pull it. 

It is true that many of the teachers who steer Materialism 

1 -1 , J J.1 • 1 disavowed 

us, more or less openly, towards this conclu- ^^^ ^^^ ^ 
sion are careful to disavow the idea that they 
are teaching materialism. The name is highly 
unpopular at the present moment, and there 
is hardly one of the men of science of to-day 
who has not protested with indignation that 
no one should dare to call him a materialist. 
They have devised subtle theories of some- 
thing called " mind-stuff " which they hold, 



208 Liberty 

with W. K. Clifford, " is the reality which we 
perceive as matter." They distinguish, with 
Huxley, between matter and force, and a third 
thing which they call consciousness and which 
they admit cannot conceivably be a modifi- 
cation of either of the first two things ; but 
they go on to say that "what we call the 
operations of the mind are functions of the 
brain, and the materials of consciousness are 
products of cerebral activity." ^ In short, they 
give a materialistic explanation of the origin 
and processes of thought, and then protect 
themselves against the imputation of being 
materialists, by solemnly averring that they 
have not the slightest idea of what matter 
really is, nor the slightest intention of sug- 
gesting that it has any resemblance to the 
so-called mental operations which are prob- 
ably produced by one of its own forms of 
activity. 
ResponsiUi- A scheme like this certainly has no room for 

ity crowded „ '^^^^, -r. ^ 

0^^ iree-wiil or personal responsibility. It makes 

a man's character and action entirely depen- 
dent upon the amount and quality of nervous 
energy that has been transmitted to him by his 
ancestors and developed by the circumstances 
of his life. He lives, as Professor Tyndall 
1 T. H. Huxley, in The Fortnightly Beview, vol. xL, 793. 



Liberty 209 

says, ill a realm of '' physical and moral neces- 
sity," — tliougli why he should be at pains to 
say "moral," I can hardly conceive. One ad- 
jective would serve as well as two, when they 
both mean the same thing. It requires but 
a little exercise of this nervous energy on our 
part, in the form of imagination, to trace it back 
to its previous form of heat stored up in cer- 
tain hundredweights of food and appropriated 
by digestion. From this point our cerebral 
activity skips lightly and altogether without 
volition along the various lines of animal and 
vegetable life, of chemical and physical trans- 
formations of energy, until we arrive at the 
idea of the sun. From this idea a certain un- 
controllable change in the gray substance of 
our brain produces the further notion that 
the arrangement of certain quantities of mat- 
ter and force which took place in some in- 
explicable way long before the birth of the 
solar system was really the thing that settled 
the question whether you and I should prefer 
telling the truth to lying, — if we do. Indeed, 
there never has been any question at all about 
it; it was fixed from the beginning. We have 
no more responsibility for it than we have for 
the colour of our eyes or the shape of our 
noses. 



210 



Liberty 



•' Thoughts 
of an Au- 
tomaton." 



I have found a brief and explicit statement 
of the position to which this method of think- 
ing forces those who follow it, in an article 
ironically entitled '' Thoughts of a Human Au- 
tomaton" in a recent English periodical.^ 

" I am an automaton — a puppet dangling on 
my distinctive wire, which Fate holds with an 
unrelaxing grip. I am not different, nor do I 
feel differently, from my fellow-men, but my 
eyes refuse to blink away the truth, which is, 
that I am an automatic machine, a piece of 
clockwork wound up to go for an allotted time, 
smoothly or otherwise, as the efficiency of the 
machinery may determine. Free-will is a myth 
invented by man to satisfy his emotions, not 
his reason. I feel as if I were free, as if I were 
responsible for my thoughts and actions, just 
as a person under the influence of hypnotism 
believes he is free to do as he pleases. But he 
is not ; nor am I. If it were once possible for 
a rational being to question this fact, the dis- 
coveries of Darwin must have set his doubts at 
rest. . . . 

" What is crime ? A crime is an action 
threatened by the law with punishment, says 
Kant : and freedom of action or free-will 



1 Henry Beauchamp, in The Fortnightly Review, English 
edition, Marcla, 1892. 



Liberty 211 

is a legally necessary condition of crime. But 
the law of heredity conclusively demonstrates 
that free-will and freedom of action stand in 
the category of lively imaginings. Therefore 
crime, as the law understands it, is non-existent, 
since no imputability can be recognized when a 
man is not responsible for his actions. There- 
fore the law is not justified in inflicting pun- 
ishment. . . . 

" Briefly to conclude. Religion can no more 
mix with science than oil with water. Science 
acknowledges no necessity for the existence of 
religion, and finally severs the bonds between 
morality and religion. Morality, altogether 
independent of religion, is entirely based upon 
self-interest. The supposed connection between 
religion and morality is an illusion most per- 
nicious to the general welfare and advance 
of mankind. Religion, as a superfluity, should 
be excluded from all educational institutions. 
Its place will be supplied by the creed of scien- 
tific philosophy — Determinism. The primary 
principle of Determinism, namely, that a human 
being is an automaton, and therefore not respon- 
sible for his thoughts or his acts, taken together 
with its corollaries, more than suflices for every 
intellectual need hitherto provided for by re- 
ligion. For the two great factors in the value 



212 Liberty 

of religion are its ethics and its sedative prop- 
erties, and in both these uses Determinism 
disx3lays overwhelming intellectual superiority. 
Its ethics are more universal and its consolation 
more assured ; for they both rest on irrefraga- 
ble scientific truth. The Determinist is con- 
sequently never harassed by doubts — the Kock 
of Ages is fragile compared with the adaman- 
tine foundation of his creed." 
The creed of This curious claim of an automaton to have 
necessi y. ^ ^^ creed " would be deliciously humorous, if 
it were not so unutterably sad, and so detest- 
ably dangerous. For though, as a matter of 
fact, there are few men who will make, even 
under an assumed name, such a candid con- 
fession of faith in their own moral non-entity 
as that which we have just read, there are many 
men who are, consciously or unconsciously, 
preaching the same black creed of Necessity 
in the subtle forms of literary art, and multi- 
tudes who are silently accepting it as gospel 
truth. Fatalism broods over modern fiction 
and the modern drama like a huge, shapeless 
spectre ; and its influence is felt in all the 
judgments and conceptions and unspoken but 
clearly revealed sentiments of a society which 
finds its chief intellectual pabulum in novels 
and plays. 



Liberty 213 

Here is the famous French realist, Zola, of "The 
whose books it is said that enough have been j^"^^^. ». 
sold to build a pile as high as the Eiffel tower. 
He writes a novel called La Bete Humaine^ in 
which he shows how unswervingly the lines of 
evil run through the plan of life. He describes 
seven inevitable murders, occurring within eigh- 
teen months in close connection with a certain 
fated house, and closes his book with the descrip- 
tion of a railway train, crowded with soldiers, 
dragged by an engine whose driver has been 
killed, dashing at headlong speed into the mid- 
night. The train is the world ; we are the 
freight ; fate is the track ; death is the dark- 
ness ; God is the engineer, — who is dead. 

Here is the leader of the Dutch Sensitivists, *'Footiteps 

of Fate.^' 

Louis Couperus, who writes a romance called 
Noodlot^ " Destiny ^^^ in which four human lives 
are tangled together in an inextricable and hor- 
rible coil. One of his characters pauses for an 
instant in the shameful career to which he is 
impelled. " He threw himself back in his chair, 
still feebly wringing his hands, and the tears 
trickled again and again down his cheeks. He 
saw his own cowardice take shape before him. 
He stared into its frightened eyes, and he did 
not condemn it. For he was as fate had made 



214 



Liberty 



'Ghosts." 



The small 
^atalists. 



him. He was a craven, and he could not heip 
it. Men called such an one as he a coward ; it 
was but a word. Why coward, or simple and 
brave, or good and noble ? It was all a matter 
of convention, of accepted meaning ; the whole 
world was mere convention, a concept, an illu- 
sion of the brain. There was nothing real at 
all — nothing I " ^ 

Here is the Norse dramatist, Ibsen, — the 
new Shakespeare by the grace of heredity. He 
writes a drama of life which he calls Ghosts, 
and shows how every player is haunted by dead 
ancestors who look through his eyes, speak in 
his words, and act in his deeds. Echoes of 
spent passion, shreds and patches of worn-out 
sin, rags and tatters of the past, — that is the 
stuff of which life is fabricated, like a piece of 
shoddy cloth, in the great mill of circumstance 
which stands on the banks of the river of time 
and turns out the shabby lives of men and 
women. 

Nor is this view of life confined to the great 
foreign masters of realism. It pervades almost 
all the minor schools of fiction ; it diffuses it- 
self insensibly through the work of the feeble 
and fatuous imitators. A keen and wholesome 

1 Louis Couperus, The Footsteps of Fate (New York, 
Appletons), p. 65. 



Liberty 215 

critic of our own literature, Mr. Charles Dudley 
Warner, put his finger upon the fact when he 
wrote ; " It has come about that the novels and 
stories which are to fill our leisure hours and 
cheer us in this vale of tears have become what 
we call tragic. It is not easy to define what 
tragedy is, but the term is applied in modern 
fiction to scenes and characters that come to 
ruin from no particular fault of their own, — 
not even when the characters break most of the 
ten commandments, — but by an unappeasable 
fate that dogs and thwarts them. This is the 
romance of fatality, and if it is tragedy, it is 
the tragedy of fatalism." 

It is not possible that such a theory of ex- 
istence should prevail without bringing sadness Melancholy 
and heaviness into the hearts of men. The "*"^^"® ^^ 
modern melancholy of Avhich we spoke in the 
first lecture is largely the result of this gen- 
eral sense of a godless predestination. It is 
Calvinism with the bottom knocked out. It 
robs life of all interest, of all joy, of all en- 
thusiasm. Was it morphine that drove Guy de 
Maupassant, the most brilliant of the younger 
French novelists, to insanity ? Or was it his 
philosophy that drove him to morphine as a 
refuge from the despair and ugliness of exist- 



216 Liberty 

ence ? Pessimism exudes from fatalism like 
sepia from the cuttlefisli. What could be 
more dispiriting than to doubt the reality of 
all effort, to deny the possibility of self-con- 
quest and triumph over circumstances, to find 
heroism an illusion and virtue a dream? What 
could break the spring of life more completely 
than to feel that our feet are tangled in a net 
whose meshes were woven for us by our ances- 
tors, and for them by tailless apes, and for them 
by gilled amphibians, and for them by gliding 
worms, and for them by ciliated larvae, and for 
them by amcebse, and for them by God does 
not know what ? It does not help the case 
in the least to do as some theologians have 
tried to do and bring back into the theory by 
the aid of certain misconstrued and very 
much overworked passages of Scripture, the 
idea of a supreme Deity who has constructed 
the loom and devised the pattern of the net 
and decreed the weaving of every loop. The 
chain of Fate is not made less heavy by fasten- 
ing the end of it to the distant throne of an 
omnipotent and impassive Creator. If our 
false sense of freedom comes from such a Be- 
ing, who is Himself free, it is all the more a 
cruel and bitter enigma. If moral responsi- 



Liherty 217 

bility lias been imposed upon us by the same 
hand whicli has bound us to an inalterable 
destiny, it is all the more a crushing and mis- 
erable fraud. To baj^tize fatalism with a Baptized 
Christian name does not change its nature. 
To hold fast to the metaphysical conception of 
God while accepting Heredity and Environment 
as His only and infallible prophets is simply to 
add a new ethical horror to the dismal delusion 
of life, and to fall back into the pessimism of 
Omar Khayyam. 

" We are no other than a moving row 
Of Magic Shadow'-shapes, that come and go 
Round with this Sun-illumined Lantern, held 
In Midnight by the Master of the Show; 

" Impotent Pieces of the Game He plays 
Upon this Checker-board of Mghts and Days; 
Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays, 
And one by one back in the Closet lays. 

" The Moving Finger writes ; and, having writ, 
Moves on; nor all your Piety nor wit 
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, 
Nor all your tears wash out a Word of it. 

" And that inverted Bowl they call the Sky, 
Whereunder crawling coop'd we live and die. 
Lift not your hands to It for help — for it 
As impotently rolls as you or 1."^ 

1 Buhdiyat of Omar Khayydm. Rendered into English 
verse by Edward Fitzgerald, with an accompaniment of draw- 
ings by Elilm Vedder (Boston, 1884), stanzas 72, 73, 75, 76. 



218 Liberty 

II 

Is determin- This is the solution which modern positivism, 
christened or unchristened, offers for the prob- 
lem of the freedom of the will. Before we 
turn to consider the very different answer 
which Christ gives to the same question, let 
us stay for a moment to ask whether this 
current and popular solution is of the nature 
of a demonstration, or of the nature of a doubt. 
Is it so clearly proven that science forces us 
to accept determinism ? Or is it an unveri- 
liable assumption, which is made under the 
influence of a general scepticism in regard to 
spiritual realities, and which leaves out of 
view quite as many and quite as important 
facts as those which it professes to explain? 
Are we compelled to admit it ; or is it only one 
of two alternatives, neither of which is scientifi- 
cally demonstrable, so that the choice between 
them must rest upon other considerations ? 

I do not hesitate to say that the whole weight 
of sober and sane criticism inclines to the lat- 
ter conclusion. Determinism has not yet been 
established either by physiological, psychologi- 
cal, or metaphysical argument. 
Philosophy The common assumption that the abstract 
says no. reasoning of Jonathan Edwards against the 



Liberty 219 

liberty of the will has never been and cannoc 
be refuted, is based upon ignorance of the facts. 
An American philosopher, Mr. Rowland Haz- 
ard, has ansAvered it with great clearness and 
force. Professor George P. Fisher says : " The 
fundamental point of Mr. Hazard's criticism 
of Edwards is fully established. It must be 
allowed that his confutation of that conception 
of the will which underlies the reasoning of the 
ofreat theoloo^ian is sound and conclusive."^ 

The support which modern science is sup- Science says 
posed to give to the theory of determinism 
turns out, upon closer examination, to be alto- 
gether illusory. The soundest and most care- 
ful investigators utterly decline to commit 
themselves to that metaphysical dogma, or to 
bind out science as a maid-of-all-work in the 
service of fatalistic theology. 

The most distinguished of living English Free-wilia 
scientists recently said : " The influence of tirade. 
animal or vegetable life on matter is infinitely 
beyond the range of any scientific inquiry 
hitherto entered on. Its power of directing 
the motions of moving particles, in the demon- 
strated daily miracle of our human free-will^ and 

1 Rowland Hazard, Freedom of Mind in Willing (Boston, 
Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1889). Introduction by George P. 
Fisher, p. xxxi. 



220 Liberty 

in the growth of generation after generation of 
plants from a single seed, are infinitely dif- 
ferent from any possible result of the fortui- 
tous concourse of atoms. The real phenomena 
of life infinitely transcend human science." ^ 
The theory that consciousness is a function of 
the brain breaks down completely when it 
attempts to explain the phenomena of sleep. 
Why should all the other functions of the 
body be carried on without fatigue and with- 
out interruption while this alone demands rest 
and admits of intervals of cessation ? If con- 
sciousness is a function of nerve-matter, sleep 
abolishes it. How does it come back again 
without losing the sense of personal identity? 
Thought is Is it conceivable that the highest character, 
the loftiest genius, is purely an intermittent 
secretion of certain nerve-cells, and that dur- 
ing the hours of sleep, embracing one-third of 
its entire history, it is absolutely non-existent ? 
"Function," says an eminent neurologist, "is 
a physiological term, and it is, I submit, im- 
proper to speak of states of consciousness as 
being functions of the brain. ... It is not 
the mind, but the physical basis of mind, which 
is a product of physical evolution. It is the 

1 Lord Kelvin (Sir William Thomson), in The Fortnightly 
Bevieiu, March, 1892. 



not a secre 
tion. 



the organ of 
the mind. 



Liberty 221 

organ of mind, not the mind of itself, which 
being an evolution out of the rest of the body 
is representative of it."^ 

The fact that the brain is a double organ, — The brain 
that there are really two brains, only one of 
which is used, — cannot be explained on the 
theory that consciousness is merely the result 
of tlie vibration of nerve filaments, as the music 
of the ^olian harp is the result of the pas- 
sage of the wind over its strings. A distin- 
guished physiologist has cleverly shown that if 
this were the case a double brain would mean 
a double amount of thought, just as twice the 
number of strings would mean twice the quan- 
tity of music. 2 But the fact that this is not so, 
points clearly to the hypothesis that the brain 
is not an ^olian harp helplessly vibrating 
under external impulses, but a double organ 
with two sets of keys, and the mind is like the 
player who can use either one of them to make 
the music. And this corresponds closely with 
our own sense of the process. For we are 
conscious not only of passive thoughts and 

1 Dr. J. Hughlings Jackson, " Lecture on the Comparative 
Study of Diseases of the Nervous System " (British Medical 
Journal, August 17, 1889). 

2 Dr. William H. Thomson, Materialism and Modern 
Physiology of the Nervous System (New York, Putnams, 
1892), pp. 83 ff. 



222 Liberty 

feelings, evoked within us by external causes, 
but also of thoughts and feelings voluntarily 
directed and combined, woven together in crea- 
tive harmonies, and moving under the guidance 
of chosen ideals towards a symphonic complete- 
ness. Even the sense of discord and conflict 
which often rises within us is an evidence that 
there is a player as well as an instrument. For 
it is inconceivable that an ^Eolian harp, ill- 
strung, should dislike its own bad music, and 
endeavour, or think that it could endeavour, to 
make a better, sweeter sound. 
Heredity not Heredity is undoubtedly a real and power- 
ful force. It supplies the outfit of life. But 
does it determine the use which we shall make 
of it ? The very extension of the doctrine 
by the investigations of science dissolves this 
narrow and absolute conclusion. We inherit 
from thousands, from hundreds of thousands, 
of ancestors. The blood of many families and 
tribes and races is mingled in our veins. 
What is it that decides which of these many 
lines we shall follow ? It must be either blind 
chance or free choice. All the phenomena of 
society, all the facts of consciousness, are in 
favour of the latter supposition. We see men 
whose heritage is of the lowest and the worst, 
working their way up, by sheer strength of 



Liberty 223 

moral choice and effort, to a higher plane. 

We see men whose heritage is of the loftiest 

and the best, declining 

" thro' acted crime, 
Or seeming-genial venial fault, 
Recm'ring and suggesting still," ^ 

to the very depths of infamy. It is true that 
a man cannot bring out of himself anything 
that is not already there. But it is true also, 
by virtue of heredity, that there are many 
potential men in every man, and which of them 
is to emerge, he chooses for himself by a thou- 
sand silent moral preferences ; by yielding or 
by resisting; by the cowardice and corruption, 
or by the courage and purification of his own 
free-will. 

Even those who write of human life from a Moral judg- 
professedly naturalistic standpoint cannot e^et ^^^^^^ 

r ^ jr o assume 

rid of this conviction. Take Zola, for example, liberty. 
If he were consistent, he would speak with 
equal and impassive coldness of all his charac- 
ters, tangled together m the inextricable toils 
of heredity. But he cannot help letting his 
hatred and contempt for the selfish, the luxu- 
rious, the vicious, express itself in the very 
accent with which he describes them. He 
cannot help showing his admiration and affec- 

1 Tennyson's poem, Will. 



224 



Liberty 



The testi- 
mony of 
modern 
psychology. 



tion for those who, like Denise and Doctor 
Pascal.) and Clotilde., rise out of the infamy 
which envelops the family Rougon-Macquart, 
Virtue and vice may be scientifically treated 
as if they were merely natural products like 
sugar and vitriol ; but when we come to talk 
of them from a human and humane standpoint, 
there is something within us which demands 
that we shall recognize a merit in being virt- 
uous, and a shame in being vicious, — qualities 
which can never belong to mere secretions, 
whether of plants or of nerves, — qualities 
which have no possible meaning unless there 
is a free-will in man, capable of choosing be- 
tween the evil and the good. 

Now that a free-will is possible, modern psy- 
chology assures us, as the result of its latest re- 
searches. It does not attempt to demonstrate 
the existence of such a power by physiological 
investigation. It confesses that this demon- 
stration is impossible with our present know- 
ledge. But it declares with equal candour that 
the contrary attempt to show that the sense of 
freedom is a delusion, is inconclusive. " The 
last word of psychology here," says Professor 
William James, " is ignorance, for the forces 
engaged are too delicate and numerous to be 
followed in detail," He points out the ex- 



Liberty 225 

tremely reckless and inconsequent nature of 
the reasoning by which the cleterminists seek 
to make mere analogies drawn from the course 
of rivers, and reflex actions, and other material 
phenomena, serve as proofs that the will is a 
mechanical effect. He exposes the bold as- 
sumption by which they ignore the testimony 
of consciousness in the presence of feeling and 
effort. He shows that the utmost which any 
argument for determinism can do is to present 
a possible hypothesis, which a man who has 
already determined to hold fast to the idea 
that the w^hole universe is one chain of inevi- 
table causation may accept if he likes. But 
meanwhile the other alternative stands equally 
open. The moral arguments all point in that 
direction. The only course, in such a situa- Free-will is 
tion, is voluntary choice. "For scepticism it- ^^^^^ 
self, if systematic, is also voluntary choice. If, 
meanwhile, the will be indetermined, it would 
seem only fitting that the belief in its inde- 
termination should be voluntarily chosen from 
amongst other possible beliefs. Freedom's 
first deed should be to affirm itself. . . . 
Thus not only our morality but our religion, 
so far as the latter is deliberate, depends on 
the effort which we can make. ^Will you or 
worCt you have it so f ' is the most probing 

Q 



226 Liberty 

question we are ever asked : we are asked it 
every hour of the day, and about the largest 
as well as the smallest, the most theoretical as 
well as the most practical, things. We answer 
hy consents or non-consents^ and not by words. 
What wonder if these dumb responses should 
seem our deepest organs of communication 
with the nature of things ! What wonder if 
the effort demanded by them should be the 
measure of our worth as men ! What wonder 
if the amount which we accord of it be the 
one strictly underived and original contribu- 
tion which we make to the world ! " ^ 



ni 
Christ says Here, then, modern science, careful, exact 

liberty is , t i • • i i r i 

real reverent, as distinguished irom modern scep- 

ticism, leaves us before the two doors. And 
here Christ comes to us, calling us to enter 
through the door of liberty into the pathway of 
eternal life. "Ask, and it shall be given you; 
seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be 
opened unto you."^ "If any man willeth to 
do His will, he shall know of the teaching." ^ 

1 William James, Psychology^ vol. ii., p. 679. 

2 St. Matt. vii. 7. 
8 St. John vii. 17. 



Liberty 227 

The whole life and ministry of Jesus is a The life of 

TT- Jesus, a 

revelation of moral freedom. His entrance revelation oj 
into the world was voluntary. His continu- A«e-wi^^ 
ance in human life was voluntary. His death 
was voluntary. At the first crisis of His life 
He chose to go about His Father's business. 
In the temptation He chose to resist the allure- 
ments of th3 Evil One. On the way to the 
cross He cho^e not to call on God for the 
deliverance which He knew would come in 
answer to His call. He was, indeed, fulfilling 
an appointed task, treading the path which 
had been marked out for the feet of the 
Christ; but He was fulfilling the task freely; 
He was walking in liberty because He loved 
to do the will of God. The triumph of His 
virtue lay in the freedom of His choice. 

There w^as a singular propriety in the text of The preach- 
His first public discourse. It was a declaration ^ gospel of 
of liberty, as well as of grace. It was an eman- liberty. 
cipation proclamation as well as a gospel of com- 
fort and help. " The spirit of the Lord is upon 
me, because He anointed me to preach good 
tidings to the poor; He hath sent me to pro- 
claim release to the captives, and recovering of 
sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that 
are crushed, to proclaim the acceptable year of 



228 Liberty 

the Lord."^ And what was the oppressive 
bondage from which He proclaimed release? 
Was it not the tyranny of a false doctrine of 
necessity over the minds of men, as well as the 
enslaving influence of sin over their inert and 
hopeless wills? 
The Phari- Here were the scribes and Pharisees teach- 

spps tcixioht 

Fate. ^^^ ^^^^ ^^® whole world was divided into 

two classes, — the chosen and the not-chosen, the 
righteous for whom salvation was secure what- 
ever they might do, and the sinners for whom 
salvation was impossible whatever they might 
do. Here were the outcast, the lost, the neg- 
lected, shut out, by no choice of their own, but 
by their birth, by the occupations in which 
they were engaged, by their ignorance, by the 
very conditions of their life, from all part in 
the kingdom of heaven as the scribes and 
Pharisees conceived it ; not only the harlots 
and the publicans, but also Am Haarez^ "the 
people of the land," with whom it was not fit- 
ting that a righteous person should have any 
dealings ; ^ miserable souls, bound by inheri- 
tance to a desperate and unhallowed fate. Here 
came Jesus, taking His way directly to these 
lost ones, these outsiders, and telling them that 
all this doctrine of inevitable doom was a chain 
1 St. Luke iv. 18. 2 Bruce, Kingdom of God, 145. 



Liberty 229 

of lies, breaking the imaginary fetters from Jesus taught 
their souls and assuring them by His first 
word that they were free, even though they 
were ignorant of it. "Repent," He cried, "for 
the kingdom of heaven has approached unto 
you."^ "Except ye be converted and become 
as little children, ye shall not enter into the 
kingdom of heaven. "^ And what is the signifi- 
cance of these words, "repentance" and "con- 
version," — their real significance, I mean, not 
that which has been read into them by centuries 
of false and formal theology? They are not 
passive and involuntary words ; they do not rest 
upon the idea of qualifications which may or 
may not be in the possession of those to whom 
Christ speaks. They are active words, — words 
of inward movement and exertion. " Repent " 
means change your mind; make that simple 
effort of the soul for internal change Avhich 
is the ultimate act of the free will ; ^ put forth 

1 St. Matt. iv. 17. 

2 St. Matt, xviii. 3. 

3 " Every intelligent being, capable of conceiving of higher 
ethical conditions than he has yet attained, has in his own 
moral nature for the exercise of his creative powers an infi- 
nite sphere, within which ... he is the supreme disposer. 
... A man who does not want to be pure and noble, may yet 
begin one step lower in the scale of moral advancement, with 
the wish to want to be pure and noble ; and, here commenc- 
ing the cultivation of his moral nature, ascend from this lower 



free 



230 Liberty 

that power of fixed attention to the new motive 
which is the central essence of liberty and the 
creative force of the soul.^ "Be converted," 
as Christ spoke the word, is not passive ; it 
expresses an action exercised by the soul within 
itself ; it means simply " turn around " ; set 
yourself in a new relation to God, to truth, to 
Faith xs virtue. The name of this relation is faith. 
" Believe " is Christ's great word. It is the 
" open sesame " of the kingdom. " Believe in 
God, believe also in Me." ^ " He that believeth 
hath everlasting life." ^ "All things are possible 
to him that believeth." * But it is never spoken 
of as a mere intellectual opinion, or emotional 
experience, an irresistible conviction w^rought 
by external evidence in the mind, or bestowed 
without effort upon the soul. The Bible never 
says that faith is a gift. There is a voluntary 
element in it. It is something to be done by 
the exercise of an inward power. It is a com- 
ing of the soul to Christ ; it is a following of the 

point, through the want to be pure and noble, to the free effort 
to gratify this want." — Rowland Hazard, Freedom oj 
Mind in Willing, "Of Effort for Internal Change" (Bos- 
ton, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1889), chap. xiv. 

1 "The essential achievement of the will when it is most 
* voluntary,' is to attend to a difficult object and hold it fast 
before the mind." — James, Psychology, vol. ii,, p. 561. 

2 St. John xiv. 1. 3 gt. John vi. 47. ^ St. Mark ix. 23. 



Liberty 231 

soul after Him; it is the first step in a long 
course of spiritual activity. It is a deed. The 
disciples said unto Christ, " What must we do 
that we may work the works of God ? " Jesus 
answered, " This is the work of God, that ye 
believe on Him whom He hath sent."^ 

Now there is not a hint in all the teaching of All may 
Jesus that this first act of freedom is impossible 
for any soul to whom He speaks. He has no 
idea of an eternal predestination binding some to 
belief and others to unbelief, a secret decree in- 
cluding certain men in the kingdom and exclud- 
ing others from all possibility of entering into it. 
It is true that He says, " No man can come unto 
Me except the Father draw him "; ^ but what He 
means by this drawing He tells us in the par- 
able of the Lost Son, where it is the simple 
knowledge of the Father's abundant love that 
draws the prodigal back from the far country 
of sin; 3 and in the parable of the Publican in 
the Temple, * where it is the sense of the Divine 
mercy and forgiveness that makes the outcast 
man cry, "God, be merciful to me a sinner." 
There is prevenient grace in the doctrine of 
Jesus. But the grace is there. It has already 
come. All that man has to do is to meet it, to 

1 St. John vi. 28, 29. » St. Luke xv. 

2 St. John vi. 44. * St. Luke xviii. 10-14. 



232 



Liberty 



Christ is 
God's call 
to faith. 



No predesti' 
nation to 
death. 



put himself into the upward swing of it, that it 
may lift and help him heavenward. 

A calling and a choosing by God are neces- 
sary before any man can be saved. But Jesus 
does not speak of this choosing and calling as 
eternal. Christ Himself is the call, and all 
who answer it are chosen. " If any man thirst, 
let him come unto Me and drink. "^ "Him that 
Cometh unto Me I will in nowise cast out."^ 
The heavenly invitation is set forth in all its 
generosity and sincerity in the story of the 
Marriage Feast. ^ The bidding went out into 
the highways and hedges, to the bad and to the 
good; and all who heard and accepted it were 
welcome. And if a single guest was turned 
away, it was only because his own conduct 
showed that he had not really taken the invi- 
tation honestly and accepted willingly all that 
was provided for him. 

There is not a single word in all that Jesus 
said to suggest any other reason than this for 
the exclusion of a single person from the bless- 
ings of the kingdom. " Ye will not come unto 
Me that ye might have life."* "How often 
would I have gathered thy children together 
even as a hen gathereth her chickens under 



1 St. John vii. 37. 

2 St. John vi. 37, 



3 St. Matt. xxii. 1-14. 
^ St. John V. 40. 



Uherty 233 

her wings, and ye would not.^' ^ There is not 
one statement that an^^thing else but mercy 
and grace has been eternally prepared by God 
for any human soul. In that awful parable of 
judgment which discloses the convincing picture 
of the final separation of the evil from the 
good, Christ says distinct!}^ that the joy of 
the blessed has been prepared for them from 
the foundation of the world, but of the punish- 
ment of the cursed. He says with equal dis- 
tinctness that it was not prepared for them, 
but for the devil and his angels. ^ No one is 
ever lost because he cannot do good, but only 
because he will not do what he can. 

Christ recognizes the undoubted truth which Christ on 
lies in the doctrine of heredity; but He ex- 
poses, and almost ridicules, the false and 
fatal extremes to which men think it out. 
To the Jews, who claimed that because they 
were Abraham's seed they must be free. He 
showed that they were in bondage to their 
own sins. They had chosen to break away 
from the heredity of faith and righteousness, 
and were no longer the true children of Abra- 
ham. They had become the children of the 
devil, because they had " willed to do his 
works." 2 He said to His disciples who took 

iSt. Matt, xxiii. 37. ^St. Matt. xxv. 34-41. 
8 St. John viii. 33-47. 



234 Liberty, 

up the cant of the day about hereditary sin and 
punishment, asked whether the blind man or 
his parents had sinned that he was born blind, 
"Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents, 
but that the works of God should be made 
manifest in him." ^ The true inheritance, the 
deepest inheritance which Jesus recognizes in 
the human race, is an inheritance from God ; 
a nature made in the Divine image, spiritual, 
free, responsible, and capable, though so sadly 
marred, though so far astray, of returning to 
communion with the Heavenly Father. 
The weak- Undoubtedly Christ perceived and taught 

ness of man. t /^r» t r- i • 

the immense difficulty of being good; the in- 
firmity which long centuries of sin has wrought 
into the very fibres of the soul; the awful 
and almost inaccessible height of true holi- 
ness ; the enormous obstacles Avhich lie in the 
way of attaining it. The gate is strait, and 
we must agonize to enter in by it. The 
road is steep, and we must toil to climb it. 
" How hardly shall they that have riches enter 
into the kingdom of God." 2 And yet "the 
kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and men 
of violence take it by force. "^ There is an 
effort which succeeds even in this greatest 
of all endeavours, not in its own strength, 

1 St. John ix. 3. 2 st. Mark x. 23. 

8 St. Matt. xi. 12. 



Liberty 235 

but because it is sure of a Divine assistance. The grace 
"With man it is impossible, but not with 
God."^ To the human will, enfeebled and 
corrupted, so that it is like a sick man, barely 
able to turn himself upon his couch, and look 
and long and cry for help, three great sources 
of strength are always open and accessible. 

The first is prayer. '' IMen ought always to Prayer. 
pray, and not to faint." ^ How sweet and 
serene is the voice that rings through the vain 
disputations and doubtful wr anglings of the 
scribes and Pharisees, and calls every sinful 
soul to pray ! Pray ! you may not be able to 
realize your own ideal, but you can ask God 
to help you hold fast to it and struggle towards 
it. Pray ! 

" More things are wrought by prayer 
Than this world dreams of." ^ 

Pray ! For God is not deaf, nor sleeping, nor 
gone upon a journey ; He has not bound you 
to an inexorable fate and bound Himself not to 
interfere with it. Pray ! The liberty of your 
own soul, and the liberty of God Himself, dwells 
in that word ; for when you stretch your feeble 
hand to Him, a Divine hand Avill meet it, and 

1 St. Mark x. 27. 2 st. Luke xviii. 1. 

3 Tennyson, The Passing of Arthur. 



236 Liberty 

break your fetters, and lift you out of darkness 
and death into life and light. 

The Holy The second source of strength is the Holy 

Spirit. It is inconceivable, morally impossible, 
that there should be such a Spirit, and yet that 
His influence should be withheld from those 
who need and implore it. "If ye then, being 
evil, know how to give good gifts unto your 
children, how much more shall your heavenly 
Father give the Holy Spirit unto them that 
ask Him."^ 

Christ our The third source of strength is Christ Him- 

self. Does the sense of past guilt stand m the 
way of future effort ? He says, " I have power 
on earth to forgive sins." ^ Does the soul feel 
dead and hopeless under the burden of evil 
habits ? He says, " I came that they may have 
life, and may have it abundantly."^ Do the 
works of a true and vital righteousness seem 
far beyond our power ? He says, "Without Me 
ye can do nothing ; " ^ but, " Lo, I am with you 
alway, even unto the end of the world." ^ " He 
that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall 
he do also, and greater works than these shall he 
do, because I go unto the Father." ^ The whole 

1 St. Luke xi. 13. * St. John xv. 5. 

2 St. Mark ii. 10. ^ gt. Matt, xxviii. 20. 
s St. John X. 10. 6 St. John xiv. 12. 



Liherty 237 

life of Christ is summed up in the words, " But 
as many as received Him, to them gave He power 
to become the sons of God." ^ 

But this receiving, we need to remember and The ivay of 

, . . , . , , . deliverance. 

assert again and again, is not a passive thing. 
It is an action of the soul, the opening of a door 
within the heart, the welcoming of a heavenly 
master. God does not save men as a watch- 
maker who repairs and sets a watch, but as a 
King Avho recalls his servants to their duty, as 
a Father who makes new revelations of His love 
to draw His lost children back to Himself. The 
dogmas of the schools in regard to the working 
out of what they call the scheme of redemption 
sound like the creak and rattle of some vast 
machine. The doctrine of Christ is like the 
soft breath of spring, evoking the songs of birds 
and the unfolding of new life. No fiery chariot 
of grace swoops down to snatch men to glory. 
But a living Messenger comes forth from God 
to ask men to turn and walk back with Him to 
their soul's home. The invitation itself is a 
guarantee of the power to accept it. With au- 
thority Christ commanded the winds and the sea 
and they obeyed Him. But with gracious plead- 
ing He invited the hearts of men, and those that 
were willing gladly heard and followed Him. 
1 St. John i. 12. 



Liberator. 



238 Liberty 

God helps "If any man wills to come after Me," ^ — that is 
help them- ^^^^ prelude of His message. He offers a leader- 
seives. ship to men who can follow, a mastership to 

men who can obey. Out of this first movement 
He promises to guide and direct the whole de- 
velopment of the new life, — not a passive life 
of retirement, of ascetic meditation, of reflec- 
tion upon secret truth, — but an active life of 
service, of warfare against evil in the world, a 
life which translates truth into conduct. 
Christus Contrast the religion of Jesus in this respect 

with the Oriental religions, and with those 
forms of Christianity which have borrowed the 
garments of Buddha and speak with the accent 
of Mahomet. They despise and slight per- 
sonality. Christ respects and emphasizes it. 
They aim to reduce and evaporate responsi- 
bility. Christ aims to deepen and increase 
it. They point forward to a blank Nirvana 
in which the individual is lost and absorbed, 
or a Paradise in which he is forever lapped in 
sensual ease and pleasure. Christ speaks of 
the perfecting of the individual through the 
Divine communion and service on earth, and 
his entrance in heaven upon a new stage of 
the same communion, the same service, — 
" not in a blessed idleness, but in an exalted 
1 St. Matt. xvi. 24. 



Liherty 239 

kingly work and activity." And the entrance 
to this kingdom on earth, the continuance in 
its realm of liberty, the attainment of its final 
glory, are all through an act of the will. The 
freedom which originated in God is only to be 
preserved by returning to God and abiding in 
Him. 

" Our wills are ours, we know not how ; 
Our wills are ours, to make them Thine."* 

That is the teaching of Jesus. That is the 
truth which, when it comes to men, makes 
them and keeps them free. 

lY 

It is impossible that we should be faithful The age 
preachers of Christ to the present age, unless 
we preach this truth. There may have been 
ages in which it was important to dwell upon 
other sides and aspects of the manifold reality 
of the spiritual world. But to-day this is the 
important side ; this is the aspect which de- 
mands a clear recognition and an unfaltering 
proclamation by those who mean to be true to 
Christ and loyal to the needs of humanity. I 
do not believe that there is a single passage in 
the Old Testament which contradicts Christ's 



message. 



1 



Tennyson, In Memoriam, Proem. 



freedom. 



240 Liberty 

doctrine of the real liberty of the soul. But 
if there were such a passage, I would leave it 
forever alone, as belonging to that knowledge 
which was in part, and which was done away 
when that which was perfect had come. I do 
not believe that there is a single word in the 
St. Paul on writings of St. Paul which stands against this 
doctrine of the real liberty of the soul. I 
cut loose from the false interpretations which 
men have read into his words. I take the 
light of Christ's teaching in my hand, and I 
go back to interpret by that light the teach- 
ings of the great Epistle to the Romans with 
its glorious revelation of '' the mystery which 
hath been kept in silence through times eter- 
nal, but now is manifested, and by the Scriptures 
of the prophets, according to the commandment 
of the eternal God, is made known unto all 
the nations unto obedience of faith.''' ^ I hear 
again the cry of the struggling, labouring, con- 
quering apostle : " To will is present with me^ 
but to do that which is good is not. ... O 
wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me 
out of the body of this death? I thank God 
through Christ Jesus our Lord;''"''^ and I know 
that St. Paul also was a believer in the free- 
dom of the will, and that he received this 
1 Rom. xvi. 26. 2 Rom. vii. 18, 24, 25. 



Liberty 241 

gospel and the power to fulfil it, through the 
proclamation of liberty in Jesus Christ. 

" This matter of free-will," wrote one of the Free-will 
most orthodox of theologians, but a few years question. 
before his death, " underlies everything. If 
you bring it to question, it is infinitely more 
than Calvinism. ... I believe in Calvinism, 
and I say that free-will stands before Calvin- 
ism. Everything is gone if free-will is gone ; 
the moral system is gone, if free-will is gone ; 
you cannot escape except by Materialism on 
the one hand or by Pantheism on the other. 
Hold hard therefore to the doctrine of free- 
will."! 

Yes, and w^e may say more than this. Not 
only is the moral system gone, but the great 
attraction of Christ is gone, the power of His 
gospel to liberate men is gone, if free-will is 
gone. 

The age has hypnotized itself. It is drift- The age has 
ing steadily towards fatalism. It denies free- itsei/. 
dom, and therefore it is not free. It is in 
bondage to its own doubt. It is enslaved by 
its own denial. If there is such a thing as 
liberty, it can only be developed, as everything 
else has been developed, by action, by exercise. 

1 A. A. Hodge, Popular Lectures on Theological Themes 
(Philadelphia, 1887), p. 184. 



242 



lAherty 



We must 
proclaim 
liberty in 
Christ. 



Life is self-change to meet environment. Lib- 
erty is self-exertion to unfold the soul. The 
law of natural selection is that those who use 
a faculty shall expand it, but those who use it 
not shall lose it. Religion is life, and it must 
grow under the laws of life. Faith is simply 
the assertion of spiritual freedom ; it is the 
first adventure of the soul. Make that ad- 
venture towards God, make that adventure 
towards Christ, and the soul will know that it 
is alive. So it enters upon that upward course 
which leads through the liberty of the sons of 
God to the height of heaven, 

" Where love is an unerring light 
And joy its own security." ^ 

This is the truth with which we are to go 
out a-gospelling in this age of doubt. We are 
to tell men that though much has been deter- 
mined for them by causes beyond their control, 
— their circumstances, their talents, their facul- 
ties, — one thing has not been determined, and 
that is what they will do with them. Much has 
been ordained before their birth, — their nation- 
ality, their family, their station in life, — but 
one thing has not been ordained, and that is 
whether they are to move from this starting- 
1 Wordsworth, Ode to Duty, 



Liberty 243 

point towards life or towards death. They 
may be like men sunken in a nightmare dream 
of helplessness, muttering in their sleep, " If I 
am to be saved, I shall be saved ; if I am to be 
lost, I shall be lost," — but we must cry to them 
with the voice of the Spirit : " Awake, thou 
that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and 
Clirist shall give thee light." 



VII 

SOVEREIGNTY 



" I say to thee, do thou repeat 
To the first man thou mayest meet 
In lane, highway, or open street — 

" That he and we and all men move 
Under a canopy of love, 
As broad as the blue sky above ; 

** That doubt and trouble, fear and pain 
And anguish, all are shadows vain, 
That death itself shall not remain ; 

** That weary deserts we may tread, 
A dreary labyrinth may thread. 
Through dark ways underground be led ; 

" Yet if we will one Guide obey, 
The dreariest path, the darkest way, 
Shall issue out in heavenly day ; 

" And we, on divers shores now cast, 
Shall meet, our perilous voyage past, 
All in our Father's house at last." 

— Richard Chenevix Trench, 
The Kingdom of God. 



science. 



VII 

SOVEREIGNTY 

The questions about the world which science ^^'^ ^^"^- 

1 . 1 daries of 

considers and answers, ail have to do with 
secondary causes. Beyond that sphere she does 
not need to go, and within that sphere her wis- 
dom is sufficient. We come to her like curious 
children. We "want to see the wheels go 
round." We want to know what the wheels 
are made of. She tells us, and there she stops. 
All that we have a right to ask of her is that 
she shall be true to facts, and that she shall 
confine herself to them. When the astronomer 
Laplace was reproached for not mentioning God 
in his treatise on the dynamics of the solar 
system, he answered, " I had no need of that 
hypothesis." And this reply was just, as Mr. 
John Fiske has pointed out, because " in order 
to give a specific explanation of any single 
group of phenomena, it would not do to ap- 
peal to divine action, which is equally the 
source of all phenomena."^ 

1 Christian Literature, January, 1896, " The Everlasting 
Reality of Religion," p. 306. 

247 



248 Sovereignty 

The great But the moment Ave take this reasonable 

questions lie ^ t , •; • /- i -j. • j_ •, 

bevojid ^^-^^ modest position (and it is a great pity 

the7n. that theology has not been more ready to take 

it), we perceive that curiosity in regard to 
single groups of phenomena by no means satis- 
fies or exhausts the activity of the questioning 
spirit in man. There is a deeper curiosity in 
regard to the relation of these single groups 
of phenomena to each other, and to ourselves, 
and to the possibility of a meaning, a purpose, 
an end, underlying all things and all theii 
workings. Out of this deeper curiosity rise 
the questions which are most urgent and vital, 
— questions which, when we consider them ab- 
stractly, are philosophical, and condition the 
unity of our intellectual life; but when we con- 
sider them personally, they are religious, and 
upon their answer our spiritual peace and moral 
action absolutely depend. How are we to think 
about the things that we know ? What are we 
to believe in regard to the things that science 
tells us we cannot know, but which we still 
feel are necessary conditions of all intelligent 
and right conduct ? Is there an invisible unity 
beneath all the visible diversity of phenomena ? 
What is the nature of that unity, personal or 
impersonal, conscious or unconscious ? Is there 
anything behind the mechanical working of 



Sovereignty 249 

the world, now so wonderfully explained, which 
corresponds to what there is in us when we 
make and use a machine or an instrument, 
when we plant and cultivate a garden, or when 
we select and train a noble race of animals? 
Is there a final cause towards which things 
work together, and a supreme power which 
guides them to that end? 

This is the question of sovereignty. We The ques- 
can no more help asking it than we can help l^Q^J{ignty, 
thinking. 

We are in the world like voyagers on a ship. 
We inquire what the ship is made of ; and 
science tells us, — iron and wood. And what 
makes it float ? The buoyancy of the air which 
it contains. And what makes it go? Steam. 
And what makes the steam ? The heat of the 
furnace. Then, if we are sufficiently inter- 
ested, science takes us down into the engine- 
room, and shows us all the condensers and 
pistons and cranks and wheels, more fully than 
they have ever been shown before ; and we are 
amazed and profoundly grateful. We come up 
again into the light of day. We look into the 
overarching heaven, the home of sunshine and 
storm, the deep mother of light and darkness. 
We look out upon the great and wide sea, 
full of mystery and terror. New questionings 



250 



Sovereignty 



Has the 

loorld a 
captainf 



Doubt 
answers, 

No. 



spring to our lips. Where is the ship going? 
Is there a captain on board ? Does he know, 
does he care, what is to become of it? Is he 
wise, is he faithful, is he a good captain ? Can 
he direct the vessel through tempests and dan- 
gers? Can he tell us how to work with him, 
how to act in times of peril and perplexity? 
Can we be sure of him, can we trust him ? 

Now to this questioning, scepticism gives a 
reply of desperate uncertainty ; and positivism 
answers with a stern and sullen. No ! The 
world is a derelict vessel, and we are master- 
less and lost mariners. This answer has been 
expressed by a French poet in powerful and 
pathetic verse. 

" Jouet de rouragan, qui I'emporte et le mene, 
Encombre de tresors et d'agres submerges, 
Ce navire perdu, mais c'est le nef humaine, 
Et nous sommes les nauf rages. 

" L'equipage affole manoeuvre en vain dans I'orabre ; 
L'fipouvante est a bord, le Desespoir, le Deuil ; 
Assise au gouvernail, la Fatalite sombre 
Le dirige vers un ecueil."^ 

But Christ gives a very different answer. 
It seems as if His very words were chosen to 
contradict this view of life as a helpless, liope- 



1 L. Ackerman, Ma Vie, Poesies, etc. (Paris, 1885), "Le 
Cri," p. 180. 



Sovereignty 251 

less voyage, and humanity as a shipwrecked Christ 
race. For what is it that He says to His yes. 
disciples as they look out upon the mystery of 
existence ? 

'' Seek not what jq shall eat, and what ye 
shall drink, neither he ye as a ship that is tossed 
on the waves of a tempestuous sea (^fir) fierewpL' 
feo-^€), for your Father knoweth that ye have 
need of these things." ^ 

The vessel is not driving masterless over the 
ocean. The Captain is on board. He is God. 
He is also our Father. For all who trust and 
serve Him, it is a sure voyage, a certain port, 
a safe harbour. 



The doctrine of the presence and sovereignty ^e 
of God in His world, in one form or another, is o/GoiL^ ^ 
essential to the validity of any reasoning which 
attempts to go beyond the mere appearance of 
things. Without it we find ourselves, as one 
has well said, " put to permanent intellectual 
confusion." Without it the world lies before 
us, as Pope wrote in the first draft of his Essay 
on Man^ — 

" A mighty maze, and all without a plan." 
1 St. Luke xii. 29. 



252 



Sovereignty 



Christ's 
view of it. 



Contrasted 
with other 
views. 



And if we follow the poet in that cold philo- 
sophical deism which led him to revise his fa- 
mous line so that it now reads 

" A mighty maze, but not without a plan," ^ 

we are still in the dark, still confused and 
hopeless, unless we go further and learn enough 
of Him who made the plan, to trust Him even 
when we cannot perfectly understand His Avork- 
ing, and to confide absolutely in "His most 
holy, wise, and powerful preserving and govern- 
ing all His creatures and all their actions." ^ 

This is what Christ gives us : a view of God 
in His Avorld which requires faith to accept it, 
but which when it is accepted, satisfies the rea- 
son and the heart better than any other view, 
clears away many of the intellectual and moral 
difficulties which beset us, and becomes the in- 
ward source not of doubt and distress, but of 
certainty and peace. 

This is not true, we must admit, of some of 
the forms in which the doctrine of divine sov- 
ereignty has been preached in Christ's name. 
They have often disregarded the facts of nat- 
ure. They have often outraged the moral 
instincts of humanity. They have created 
new obstacles to faith. They have driven men 

1 Pope's Essay on Man, part i., line 6. 

2 The Shorter Catechism, question xi. 



Sovereignty 253 

back in dumb resent inciit to believe in the 
positivist's '^ sombre Fatality," rather than in 
an absentee God who has foreordained, by one 
and the same decree, all the evil and all the 
good, all the sorrow and shame and suffering 
that are in the world. 

Not so with Christ's teaching. It is sane 
and sweet. It allays resentment and begets 
serenity. It gives a reconciling, harmonizing, 
atoning view of God's sovereignty. And if 
we can see it clearly and preach it faithfully, 
it will be to-day, as it Avas in His day, one of 
the great attractions of the gospel for an age 
of doubt. 

II 

Christ's doctrine of the divine sovereignty ChHsVs 
was both old and new. It was old because it 
recognized the truth, uttered so magnificently 
by prophets and psalmists, of God's right and 
power to rule the universe which He has 
made. "Thy throne, O God, is for ever and 
ever."i "The Lord hath prepared His throne 
in the heavens and His kingdom ruleth over 
all." 2* "He doeth according to His will in the 
army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of 
the earth : and none can stay His hand, or say 
unto Him, What doest Thou ? " ^ 
1 Psalm xlv. 6. 2 psalm ciii. 19. ^ Daniel iv. 35. 



and new. 



254 Sovereignty 

A simpler But Christ's doctrine was new because it 

revelation. t -i ,^ /• ,1 • r^ t • 

revealed tlie presence oi the sovereign Grod in 
the physical universe more simply, more natu- 
rally, more intimately, than it had ever been 
revealed before. How gentle, how plain, how 
mildly luminous, is the language in which 
Jesus expresses this truth, compared with the 
flashing, rolling speech of the prophets ! He 
uses the words of common life, transfigured 
with emotion, — the language of lyric, rather 
than of epic, poetry. 
God in His The manifestations of divine power in the 
Old Testament appear chiefly as mighty works, 
exceptional forthputtings of supernal force. 
It seems sometimes as if they came from a 
distance ; as if God had withdrawn from the 
world and had been called back to it by the 
peril and the cry of His people. But Christ 
would teach us to feel that He has never gone 
away for an instant. He is always here. 
Nothing that happens is hidden from Him. 
Nor does He hide Himself from any who 
would behold Him. We may see Him every 
day, in the feeding of the birds, in the blos- 
soming of the flowers, 

" And every wayside bush aflame with God." 

In all the processes of nature He is present 
and sovereign. 



Sovereignty 255 

This view of tlie relation of God to the ma- ^^*e divine 

., IT. , , 1 1 1-1 immanence. 

terial world is not external and mechanical. 
It is inward and vital. God has not made the 
world and wound it up and left it to run by 
itself. He is in it, as really as a man is in the 
house that he inhabits, and all the potencies 
that move and animate it flow directly from 
Him. The Jews thought that God had fabri- 
cated the universe in six days and sat down to 
rest on the seventh, laying aside His work as 
a clock-maker would put down a finished 
clock. But Christ said, " My Father worketh 
until now, and I work."^ Creation is not 
ended, it is going on all the time. Yesterday 
was a creative day ; and so is to-day ; and so 
to-morrow will be. The divine thought is 
still weaving its beautiful garment on the 
roaring loom of Time. 

But God's activity in the world is not ca- The divine 
pricious or disorderly. No one was more sen- 
sitive than Jesus to "the rhythmic element 
in nature, — the flow of rivers, the procession 
of stars, the antiphony of day and night, the 
silent but inviolate order of the seasons." ^ It 
was He who expressed the law of growth : 

1 St. John V. 17. 

2 H. W. Mabie, Essays on Nature and Culture (New York, 
1896), p. 295. 



256 Sovereignty 

"first the blade, then the ear, and after that 
the full corn in the ear/'^ It was He who 
suggested the analogy of natural law in the 
spiritual world, applying the figure of germi- 
nation to His own death and resurrection : 
" Except a corn of wheat fall into tlie ground 
and die, it abideth alone ; but if it die, it 
bringeth forth much fruit. "^ The parables 
which He used to describe the kingdom of 
heaven were drawn from nature and based on 
law. It was like "leaven which a woman 
took and hid in three measures of meal until 
the whole was leavened," or "like a grain of 
mustard seed, which a man took and sowed 
in his field ; which indeed is the least of all 
seeds, but when it is grown it is the greatest 
among herbs." ^ He taught His disciples to 
look upon the regular and steadfast ordinances 
of nature as the proof that their Heavenly 
Father was mindful of them and would take 
care of them. You will not find any such su- 
perfluous phrase as " special Providence " in the 
teaching of Jesus. His thought was of a gen- 
eral and universal Providence, wide enough 
and deep enough to embrace the wants of all 
creatures and provide for them. God's chil- 

1 St. Mark iv. 28. 2 gt. John xii. 24. 
8 St. Matt. xiii. 32, 33. 



Sovereignty 257 

dren were not to trust in miracles and marvels 
for their daily bread ; they were not to be 
always looking and calling for the extraordi- 
nary, — manna from the sky, water from the 
riven rock. They were to rest rather upon 
the course of nature in quiet confidence, and 
work with it in cheerful jo}', knowing that 
He who clothes the grass of the field will much 
more clothe them,^ — and by the same power 
working in the same way. 

Yet Jesus did not think of God as having Miracles not 
exhausted all possible modes of His activity ^^^^^^^^^ 
in those which are familiar to us. His pres- 
ence in the world is of such a personal kind 
that it necessarily brings with it the power of 
direct, personal, infinitely varied action. Out 
of this power spring those strange signs and 
wondrous works which we call miracles. Jesus 
never said that they were against nature. He 
never even said that they were supernatural. 
He claimed only that they were proofs of a 
divine mission, because they were such works 
as could only come from God. They were 
signs, just as all uncommon and extraordinary Signs of 
acts are signs. But signs of what? Of per- P^^^^'^^^y- 
sonality, of that power of choice in modes of 

1 St. Matt. vi. 30. 



258 Sovereignty 

action which is the essential attribute of a 
free spirit. They were wrought in order 
that men might believe, not in order that 
they might be astonished; and just as truly 
in order that they might believe in the order 
of nature as in the Person who upholds it by 
His presence. 
The reign of "An energy," says Mr. Ruskin, "may be 

God through ^ , • ,^ i ^ • i it- 

l^^^^ natural without being normal, and divine 

without being constant." Jesus did not teach 
the reign of law. He taught the reign of God 
through law. And in order that men might 
be sure that the law did not bind God like a 
chain, but freely expressed His sovereign will, 
it was given unto Jesus to show men those 
rare works, unique and transcendent, like 
strokes of genius, which reveal, as if by flashes 
of light, the true relation between the sover- 
eign God and the universe which He is mak- 
ing and ruling. 

The secret It is always to this personal God that Jesus 

would direct the thoughts and confident affec- 
tions of men. How is it possible for any one to 
miss His meaning, and translate it into some- 
thing entirely different, as Matthew Arnold 
does in his misinterpretation of what he calls 
"the secret of Jesus" ? It is not merely the joy 



Sovereignty 259 

and peace of self-renunciation that Jesus sets 

forth to His disciples. It is the inward qui- Trust in a 

1 • sovereign 

etude and rest of seli-surrender to a loving jpather. 
Father who is also the Mighty God. And it 
is not from the sense of His resistless power, 
but from the consciousness of His love, of 
His Fatherhood, that peace comes. " Yea, 
Father, for so it was well-pleasing in Thy 
sight." ^ ''Father, all things are possible unto 
Thee ; remove this cup from Me : howbeit 
not what I will, but what Thou wilt."^ 
" Father, into Thy hands I commit My spirit." ^ 
This is the secret of Jesus. He does not teach 
bare sovereignty to which we must yield be- 
cause it is irresistible. He teaches sover- 
eignty of a certain kind, — the sovereignty 
of a Father, who is as much better, as He is 
more powerful, than all earthly parents or 
rulers, and who will never forsake His world, 
nor suffer His children to slip from His mighty 
hand. 



m 



But sovereignty of this kind necessarily im- 
plies distinctions in the manner of its exercise. 
It cannot possibly be conceived of in terms of 

1 St. Matt. xi. 26. 2 st. Mark xiv. 36. 3 St. Luke xxiii. 46. 



260 



Sovereignty 



The highest 
kind of 
sovereignty 
discrimi- 
nates. 



A lower 
kind of 
sovereignty 
mechanical. 



any single force or confined to any one mode of 
operation. It must be flexible and discriminat- 
ing. It must include within itself as many 
forms of rule as there are forms of being under 
its dominion. What, for example, should we 
say of a king who had but one way of dealing 
with all his subjects, young and old, wise and 
ignorant, loyal and disloyal, and who treated 
his servants under precisely the same condi- 
tions as his horses and his chariots ? Or what 
should we say of a father who attempted to reg- 
ulate and rule his children without reference to 
their character, and who made no distinction 
between them and the furniture of his house? 
Yet this, in effect, is the theory of the divine 
sovereignty which has frequently been set forth 
by theologians as if it were the only one which 
did justice to the glory of God. 

*' The will of God," according to this theory, 
"is the irresistible force. It is the source of 
all things, all persons, all events. From it they 
all proceed, under it they all act, by an invari- 
able necessity. This will has already deter- 
mined from all eternity everything that comes 
to pass. Every character in the world, like 
every rock and every plant, is just what God 
willed it to be. Everything that happens, hap- 
pens because He willed it and precisely as He 



Sovereignty 261 

willed it. The life of mankind is far from 
being in any sense a voyage, an adventure, a 
probation. It is simply the process of printing 
a history which has already been written and 
set in type down to the last letter. The great 
press is in motion. Our souls are the blank 
pages. On one is printed a foreordained prayer. 
On another a foreordained blasphemy. Death 
is the folding knife. Judgment is the act of 
binding, in which the fair pages will be pre- 
served and the foul pages rejected and burned. 
The sovereignty of God is exercised in seeing 
that the book goes through the press exactly as 
it was written, without the addition or sub- 
traction of a single syllable of the foreordained 
text." 

But surely, even if this theory were true and The lower 

IctYtd. Ip^s 

could be proved, it is not of a nature to give glorious. 
aid and comfort to those who are zealous for 
the glory of God. It does not really exalt and 
magnify the divine sovereignty, but narrows 
and degrades it. It does not call for the per- 
fect wisdom and unlimited resources of a potent 
Ruler able to meet emergencies, to overcome 
oppositions, to guide and direct intelligent and 
free subjects like Himself, and to conduct a 
high enterprise, through all the difficulties that 
may arise, to a successful end. It calls for 



262 Sovereignty 

qualities of a lower kind and a strictly limited 
scope ; the exact knowledge and the applied 
strength of a skilful machinist ; not the broad 
intelligence, the swift genius, the inexhaustible 
patience, and the triumphant personal influ- 
ence of a great Captain, a Master and Lord of 
men. 
Which kind It is conceivable, of course, that God might 

has God , . • 1 • 1 TT- 

chosen? have chosen to create a universe m which His 
sovereignty should be exercised in this one un- 
varying line of foreordained necessity. Being 
supreme, He has both the right and the power 
to make such a sphere, or spheres, for the rev- 
elation of His attributes as may please Him. 
But it is not humanly conceivable that He 
should have made this particular choice which 
is ascribed to Him for His own glory. If He 
had chosen this kind of a universe, so far as we 
can see, it must have lowered and hidden His 
glory. It must have left Him with a field in 
which the highest qualities of personality could 
not possibly be exercised. It must have made 
all subsequent choice, and all approval or 
disapproval, and all truly moral government 
impossible. The existence of rewards and pun- 
ishments, the sense of merit or demerit among 
the creatures of such a world, would be inex- 
plicable. Nay more, it would be a cruel delu- 



Sovereignty 263 

sion, which, since it must come like everything 
else, according to this theory, from the will of 
the Maker, would reflect a dark shadow of dis- 
credit upon His moral character. To claim 
that this sense of responsibility, like all other 
parts of the system, may be a necessity, a legal 
fiction which is essential to the working of a 
scheme far above our comprehension and there- 
fore above our judgment, makes it more awful, 
but not more admirable. If there is any valid- 
ity whatever in our moral instincts, we need not 
hesitate to say, that from our present point of 
view, which is for us the only one attainable, 
this theory of the absolute and unconditional 
sovereignty of God, exercised by one law of 
necessity over all creatures, is so far from being 
for God's glory that it is apparently for His 
shame and dishonour. 

As a matter of fact, it has been, and still is, ^'^^ ^^•^" 

culties of 

the most fertile mother of doubts. " A uni- absolutism. 
verse in which all the power was on the side of 
the creator, and all the morality on the side of 
creation, would be one compared with which 
the universe of naturalism would shine out as a 
paradise indeed." ^ The idea of an irresponsible 
God ruling by an eternal and inflexible fiat 
over responsible men, is a moral nightmare, 
1 Foundations of Belief, p. 326. 



264 



Sovereignty 



Jesus de- 
livers us 
from them. 



under which humanity groans, and from which 
it struggles to awake, even though it should 
have to open its eyes upon the blank darkness 
of an unsearchable night. Between the un- 
knowable God of agnosticism and the unlov- 
able God of absolutism, there is indeed little 
to choose. But the choice, such as it is, lies 
on the side of agnosticism. It is unspeak- 
ably better to doubt God's personality, His 
supremacy. His very being, than it is to 
doubt His eternal goodness and His moral 
integrity. 

But the teaching of Jesus is designed and 
fitted to deliver us, if we will accept it, from 
both of these doubts. He reveals a God who 
is not only Lord of all, but who exercises His 
sovereignty in discretion, in justice, and in 
love. He does not look upon all His creatures 
with the same eyes. He discriminates. He 
distinguishes. He has regard to their differ- 
ences of nature and character. The human 
soul is of more value to Him than many spar- 
rows.^ How much is a man better than a 
sheep ? 2 By so much as he is more like God, 
spiritual, free, responsible, immortal. These 
qualities, which God Himself has created, God 
Himself respects. Every word of Jesus takes it 
1 St. Matt. X. 31. 2 St. Matt. xii. 12. 



Sovereignty 265 

for granted that God is not an infinite Auto- God is a 

fCLlT TflCiStCT , 

crat, a hard master, reaping where He has not 
sown, and gathering where He has not strewed, 
but a fair and equitable Lord, who takes into 
consideration all the conditions of His subjects 
and renders unto all their dues. The forces of 
nature obey His will inevitably, and for them 
there is neither praise nor blame. The souls 
of men are invited to love Him, and com- 
manded to serve Him, but they are left free to 
choose whether they will obey or disobey, and 
upon their choice the approval and blessing of 
God depend. 

Who can question for a moment that this is ^^e divi7ie 

OT)iniT)ot6nc6 

the view of the divine sovereignty wdiich un- seif-Umited 
derlies all the parables of Christ ? The omnip- i^ action. 
otence which He teaches is not sheer, absolute, 
unconditioned. It is a self-restrained power. 
It is able to limit itself, to act in such a way 
and under such conditions as God chooses to 
create. If He could not do this, He would not 
be truly omnipotent. If there were but one 
method in which He could manifest His will, 
and that the method of necessity. He would be 
forever shut out from personal relations, which 
can only exist where there are different wills, 
capable of agreement or disagreement, of co- 
operation or conflict, of harmony or discord. 



266 Sovereignty 

Jesus believed and taught that God has actu- 
ally chosen to limit the autocratic exercises of 
His sovereignty by creating beings who have 
the power of yielding to His will or of resist- 
ing it. 
The origin Audi from this resistance flow all the evil, 

of evil not 

in God. all the sorrow, all the misery of the Avorld. 

God does not ordain sin. God does not even 
permit sin, in the sense that He allows it to 
exist without opposition and condemnation on 
His part. It may be a necessary feature of 
a world of free choice and moral probation. 
Jesus seems to imply as much when He says 
"It must needs be that offences come." But 
He adds at once, " Woe unto that man by whom 
the offence cometh."^ That man is not doing 
the will of God. He is a rebel, a traitor, an 
apostate. Sin is a perversion of the heart from 
its true purpose just as blindness is a perver- 
sion of the eye from its true function. ^ When 
the tares appear in the field, Christ does not 
leave us to suppose for a moment that they 
were planted by the same hand that sowed the 
good seed. He says, " An enemy hath done 
this."^ Satan, who is the embodiment of evil 
and the leader of all who are opposed to God, 

1 St. Matt, xviii. 7. 2 gt. Luke xi. 34-36. 

8 St. Matt. xiii. 28. 



Sovereignty 267 

is the great enemy, tlie adversary not only of 
souls, but also of the Divine will. 

Turn for a moment to the narrative of the ^'"'^ »'« ^^'^ 
temptation of Christ. ^ lie Avas led up by the e„e„jy. 
Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of 
the devil. But did the same Spirit lead the 
devil ? Was Satan acting under the divine 
sovereignty in the same sense, in the same way, 
that Jesus was ? Set aside, if you will, the 
question of the personality of the evil one. 
There was a suggestion of evil before the mind 
of Jesus. Did that suggestion come from the 
same source as the holy strength that resisted it, 
— the all-creating, all- controlling will of God ? 
Can the same fountain send forth sweet and 
bitter waters? Why then should the one be 
called cursed and the other blessed? Such a 
view simply obliterates all moral distinctions. 
It completely undermines and ruins the sig- 
nificance of Christ's life as a free obedience to 
the will of God, and it utterly paralyzes His 
gospel as a divine call to men to enter freely 
into the same obedience. 

Jesus teaches very distinctly that there are Two spheres 
two spheres in which the sovereignty of God loy^reignty. 
is exercised, — in heaven and on earth. ^ These 

1 St. Matt. iv. 1-11. 

2 Beyschlag, Mw Testament Theology, vol. i., pp. 84, 85. 



268 



Sovereignty 



Militant 
on earth. 



two spheres are not conceived locally but spirit- 
ually. They are realms in which the power of 
God is working under different conditions. In 

Triumphant j^eaven the Divine Avill is unopposed, and there- 
to heaven. ^ ^ 

fore the empire of heaven is peace and holiness 
and unbroken love. On earth the Divine will 
is opposed and resisted, and therefore earth is 
a scene of conflict and sin and discord. For 
this reason the kingdom of heaven must come 
to earth, it must win its way, it must strive 
with the kingdom of darkness and overcome it. 
God's sovereignty in heaven is triumphant. 
God's sovereignty on earth is militant, in order 
that it may triumph, — and triumph not in uni- 
versal destruction, but in the salvation of all 
who will submit to it and embrace it and work 
with it, — triumph not by bare force, as gravi- 
tation triumphs over stones, but by holy love, 
as fatherly wisdom and affection triumph over 
the reluctance and rebellion of wayward chil- 
dren. 

It must be admitted frankly that this view 
of Divine sovereignty does not seem to be 
consistent with the theory of absolute divine 
foreknowledge of all volitions and all events. 
This has been urged as a fatal objection against 
it. But the objection cannot be pressed because 



Divine 

omni- 
science. 



Sovereignty 2G9 

it lies in a region where our ignorance is so 
great that dogmatism is, to say the least, unbe- 
coming. There may be some way of reconcil- 
ing the self-limitation of God's omnipotence 
with the certainty of His foreknowledge, which 
is beyond the reach of our logic. But whether 
there be any such reconciliation or not, one 
thing is clear : we have not the right to make 
a logical statement of our ignorance of one 
divine attribute a reason for refusing to accept, 
frankly and sincerely, Christ's revelation of 
the mode in which another divine attribute is 
exercised. 

God knows everything. But when we say Foreknow- 
that, we mean simply that He knows every- ^ '^V^'^!l 
thing which can be the object of knowledge, the/acts. 
He knows all things as they are. He does not 
know them as they are not. The very perfec- 
tion of His knowledge consists in its exact 
correspondence with the nature of its object. 
If an event is certain, fixed, and foreordained, 
then God knows it as certain, fixed, and fore- 
ordained. If it is contingent upon the free, self- 
determining, preferential action of a human will, 
then God knows that it is contingent, for He 
Himself has foreordained that it should be so. 

God waits to hear whether His children will ^(>^ waits. 
call upon Him in their distress ; and if they 



270 



Sovereignty 



The proba- 
tion of men. 



The Lord 
of Hosts. 



call, He hears and helps them. If Jesus teaches 
anything, He teaches that prayer really in- 
fluences the purpose and action of God. 

God waits to see whether His husbandmen 
will return to Him the fruits of His vineyard ; 
whether they will receive and honour the mes- 
sengers whom He sends unto them ; and if they 
are rejected. He sends other messengers ; and 
last of all He sends His Son, saying, " It may be 
they will reverence him." ^ But when this last 
mayhe does not come to pass, then judgment 
falls upon the wicked husbandmen, not because 
they have fulfilled the secret will of the King, 
but because they have rebelled against Him. 

This conception of God in His world, not as 
the mere spectator of the fulfilment of His 
own immutable decrees, but as the Lord of 
Hosts, presiding over the great scene of con- 
flict between good and evil in the souls of 
men who can only attain to real holiness 
through real liberty, and warring mightily on 
the side of good in order that it may win the 
victory, infinitely exalts and glorifies Him. 
We see Him in the teaching of Jesus, as the 
High Captain of the armies of love, working 
salvation in the midst of the earth, pleading 
with men to accept His mercy, warning them 
1 St. Luke XX. 13. 



Sovereignty 271 

to escape from His judgments, sustaining the 

good in their goodness, overthrowing the 

Avicked in their wickedness, bringing light 

out of darkness and triumph out of defeat, 

amid all strifes and storms maintaining His 

kingdom of righteousness and peace and joy 

in the Holy Ghost. His sovereignty embraces Sovereignty 

human liberty as the ocean surrounds an island. m^Q^^y 

His sovereignty upholds human liberty as the 

air upholds a flying bird. His sovereignty 

defends human liberty as the authority of a 

true king defends the liberty of his subjects, 

— nay, rather, as the authority of a father 
tenderly and patiently respects and protects 
the spiritual freedom of his children in order 
that they may learn to love and obey him 
gladly and of their own accord. For this is 
the end of God's sovereignty : that His king- 
dom may come ; that His will may be done 
on earth, — not as it is done in the circling 
of the stars or in the blossoming of flowers, 

— but as it is done in heaven, where created 
spirits freely strike the notes that blend in 
perfect harmony with the music of the Divine 
Spirit, where 

" Thousands at his bidding speed 
And post o'er land and ocean without rest; 
They also serve who only stand and wait." 



272 



Sovereignty 



IV 



Does this 
create un- 
certainty ? 



The reserve 
of power. 



Evil tran- 
sient, good 
eternal. 



But does not the acknowledgment that God 
has thus limited the operation of His sover- 
eignty on earth by conditioning His actions 
upon the character and conduct of other beings 
than Himself, throw us back into confusion and 
uncertainty? Does it not make the course of 
the world insecure and the end of all things 
doubtful ? 

It would do so if it were not for the other 
truth which Jesus reveals with equal clearness, 
that God is in the world guiding, ruling, and 
directing it, and that He has kept the suprem- 
acy in His own hands. His presence is the 
talisman of creation. He is the master of the 
ship ; His hand is on the helm ; and whether 
the sailors obey or mutiny. He will guide the 
vessel to her appointed haven. 

The power of evil is a finite, transient, self- 
destroying power. It disintegrates, it dies, it 
passes away with the enfeeblement and de- 
struction of the soul that yields to it. But 
the power of goodness is eternal and incor- 
ruptible, because it is of God. Satan is the 
prince of this world, but his might is limited 
to the perverted and enslaved wills that sub- 
mit to him. He is not the ruler of nature. 



Sovereignty 273 

God is the master of winds and waves and 
earth and stars. The great battalions are on 
His side and under His control. If for one 
instant the cause of Christ were in real dan- 
ger, He could summon celestial hosts without 
number to His assistance.^ But because He 
knew this, He knew also that His cause was 
never in danger. He knew that His kingdom 
was an everlasting kingdom. He knew that 
He had already overcome the world. 

How serene and splendid are the words with God the 

, . , -TT TT- T • 1 • 1 rock of our 

which He reassures His disciples, again and ^^,^^^ 
again! ^^ Fear not! Care not! Be not anx- 
ious! thou of little faith^ wherefore didst thou 
doubt P Have faith in God! Upon this rock 
will I build my church and the gates of hell shall 
not prevail against it ! Fear not^ little flock^ for 
it is your Father^ s good pleasure to give you the 
kingdom ! " How glorious is the vision of that 
kingdom which Jesus unfolds as He looks for- 
ward to the new birth of earth and heaven in 
the perfect fulfilment of the purpose of God ! 
How absolute is the confidence with which He 
rests upon God's power to work out all that 
may be needed to bring about that blessed 
consummation. The unwavering faith of Jesus 
in the permanence and world-wide diffusion and 
1 St. Matt. xxvi. 53. 



274 



Sovereignty 



The inspira- 
tion of 
he7'oism. 



The secjxt 
of courage. 



ultimate triumph of His kingdom of truth and 
.holiness and love, is not the least — some- 
times I think it is the greatest — evidence 
of His divinity and charm of His gospel. 

Communicated by His divine influence to the 
hearts of His disciples, this faith has been a 
force of incalculable potency and inspiration in 
the lives of men. The noblest deeds of hero- 
ism and self-sacrifice and liberation have been 
wrought in the strength of it. The greatest 
conquests over self and sin, the supreme vie- 
tories of righteousness and love and peace in 
human hearts, have been won through this faith. 
Deus vult — God wills it ! — is the war-cry that 
rouses the human will to its highest endeavour. 

Here is a man struggling against evil, long- 
ing and striving to rise to high and holy life. 
And if he is alone in the struggle, what assur- 
ance has he, what promise or hope of success ? 
He may fail, he may perish. But when the 
great truth flashes into his heart that God is 
with him in the fight, that God is ''not will- 
ing that any should perish but that all should 
come to repentance,"^ that God is the captain 
of his salvation and the leader of his soul, 
— then he is emancipated, then he triumphs, 
then he is joined to the Invincible. He cries 
1 2 Pet. iii. 9. 



Sovereignty 275 

with Paul, '' If God is for us, who is against 



us 



?"i 



Here is a saint called to endure sharp and The 
heavy trials, to drink the bitter waters of JJurance, 
aftliction, to pass through the fires of pain, to 
go down into the dark valley of the shadow. 
Alone, it would be impossible ; human patience 
could not endure it, human courage could not 
face it, human wisdom could not solve the mys- 
tery of goodness called to suffer. But with 
God, believing that He is sovereign, and that 
He is love, — how different it is ! Now you 
shall see the wondrous spectacle of a frail, gen- 
tle, mortal soul, strengthened by simple sub- 
mission to God's will, persecuted but not for- 
saken, cast down but not destroyed, trembling 
but victorious. Such a soul cries : " The will 
of God be done. It cannot be His will that I 
should lose my faith. It cannot be His will 
that I should deny Him. It cannot be His 
will that I should be lost, for He is good. He is 
my King, my Father, He will save me. It 
may be His will that I should suffer trial for 
the purifying of my faith, for a more perfect 
fellowship with Christ, for a better reward in 
heaven. Even so. Father, for so it seemeth 
good in Thy sight. " 

1 Rom. viii. 31. 



276 Sovereignty 

" I welcome all Thy sovereign will, 
For all that will is love ; 
And when I know not what Thou dost, 
I wait the light above." 

Oodin How radiant and magnificent is that truth 

history. 

as it appears in the history of the Church. The 
people of God have often been persecuted and 
oppressed, yet God has been on their side, and 
no weapon that has been formed against them 
has prospered. Here is Philip of Spain send- 
ing his great Armada to crush the Reformed 
Church of England and destroy religious lib- 
erty in the cradle. Like a huge flock of vul- 
tures with outspread wings and fierce talons 
and harsh innumerable cries of menace, that 
most terrific company of war-ships that ever 
darkened air and sea swoops towards its prey. 
But the wrath of God meets it on the ocean, 
and drives disorder through its serried ranks ; 
the swift little ships of England pierce it, and 
break its wings, and riddle it with terror ; its 
onset is changed to flight, and as it flies, the angry 
blasts of heaven and the wild waves of wrath 
catch it again, and whirl it away, and scatter 
on a hundred rocky shores and lonely beaches 
the wrecks and fragments of the lost Armada. 
How often has that wondrous history been 
repeated ! How often has God proved His 



God. 



Sovereignty 277 

sovereignty by preserving and rescuing and 
delivering His peoj^le from overwhelming 
perils I Even when it has seemed to be other- 
wise, even when the Church has appeared for- 
saken and helpless, when the billows of perse- 
cution have rolled fathom-deep above her head, 
when avalanches of falsehood have buried the 
truth out of sight, it has only been for a time, 
and the end has been the victory of the de- 
feated. The blood of the martyrs has been 
the seed of the Church. The boastful shouts of Truth and 
error have been the advertisement of the silent 
truth. Error has had kings and generals, 
philosophers and orators, empires and armies ; 
truth has had God. Error has had swords and 
spears, ships and cannons, fortresses and dun- 
geons, racks and fires ; truth has had God. 
God and one make a majority. Unless the 
Church doubts, she cannot fear. Unless the 
Church denies, she cannot despair. In the dark- 
est days, when the confusion seems greatest, 
the conflict most unequal, she can look out on 
the great battle-field and cry 

*' History's pages but record 
One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and 

the Word; 
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the 

throne, — 



278 



Sovereignty 



The victory 
is sure. 



The final 

co7isumma- 

tion. 



Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim 

unknown 
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above 

His own." 1 

But is it for the Church alone, is it not for 
the whole world that this truth of God's sov- 
ereignty shines ? To our eyes the conflict of 
life and death, of good and evil, seems to be 
undecided, and we think it may be perpetual. 
The dust blinds us ; the uproar bewilders us ; 
as far as our sight can pierce we see nothing 
but the rolling strife, — sin always in arms 
against holiness, the created will always resist- 
ing and defying the creator. But Christ sees that 
the conflict is decided, though it is still in prog- 
ress. Christ sees that the victory is won, 
though it is not yet manifest. On the hill of 
the cross the captain of salvation met the cap- 
tain of sin and conquered him. Calvary is 
victory. Through death Christ hath overcome 
him that had the power of death, that is the 
devil. ^ Satan has received his mortal wound ; 
and if he still fights more fiercely, it is because 
he knoweth that he hath but a short time.^ The 
day is coming when he must perish ; the day is 
coming when sin and strife shall be no more ; 



1 James Kussell Lowell, The Present Crisis. 

2 Heb. ii. 14. 3 Rev. xii. 12. 



Sovereignty 279 

the day is coming when Christ shall put all 
enemies under His feet^ and shout above the 
grave of death, ' ' O thou enemy, destructions 
are come to a perpetual end " ; the day is com- 
ing when the great ship of the world, guided 
by the hand of the Son of God, shall float out 
of the clouds and storms, out of the shadows 
and conflicts, into the perfect light of love, and 
God shall be all in all. The tide that bears the 
world to that glorious end is the sovereignty 
of God. 

O mighty river, strong, eternal Will, 
In which the streams of human good and ill 
Are onward swept, conflicting, to the sea, — 
The world is safe because it floats in Thee. 

1 1 Cor. XV. 25-28. 



VIII 
SERVICE 



" Thyself and thy belongings 
Are not thine own so proper as to waste 
Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee. 
Heaven doth with us as we with torches do, 
Not light them for themselves ; for if our virtues 
Did not go forth of us, 't were all alike 
As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touched 
But to fine issues ; nor Nature never lends 
The smallest scruple of her excellence, 
But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines 
Herself the glory of a creditor — 
Both thanks and use." 

— Measure for Measure. 



VIII 

SERVICE 

That strange and searching genius, Nathaniel This uneven 
Hawthorne, in one of his spiritual phantasies 
has imagined a new Adam and Eve coming to 
the earth after a Day of Doom has swept away 
the whole of mankind, leaving their works and 
abodes and inventions, — all that bears witness 
to the present condition of humanity, — un- 
touched and silently eloquent. The represent- 
atives of a new race enter with wonder and 
dismay the forsaken heritage of the old. They 
pass through the streets of a depopulated city. 
The sharp contrast between the splendour of 
one habitation and the squalor of another, fills 
them with distressed astonishment. They are 
painfully amazed at the unmistakable signs of 
inequality in the conditions of men. They are 
troubled and overwhelmed by the evidence of 
the great and miserable fact that one portion 
,of earth's lost inhabitants was rich and com- 
fortable and full of ease, while the multitude 

283 



284 



Service 



The sense of 
distress at 
life's ine- 
quality. 



The sympa- 
thy of the 
age. 



was poor and weary and heavy-laden with 
toil.i 

This feeling of sorrowful perplexity over the 
unevenness and apparent injustice of human 
life, which the prose poet puts into the heart 
of his new Adam and Eve, is really but a reflec- 
tion from the tender and pitiful depths of his 
own. Who is there that has not sometimes 
felt it rising within his own breast, — this pro- 
found sentiment of inward trouble and grief, 
this feeling of spiritual discord and wondering 
repugnance at the sight of a world in which the 
good things of life are so unequally distributed, 
in which at the very outset of existence, before 
the factor of personal merit or demerit, the 
element of work and wages, enters into the 
problem at all, so much is given to one man 
and so little to another man that they seem to 
be forever separated and set at enmity with 
each other by the unfairness with which they 
are treated? 

This sentiment has been strangely deepened 
and intensified in the nineteenth century by 
innumerable causes, until it has become one of 
the most marked characteristics of the present 
age. Never before have men felt the sorrows 

1 Hawthorne's Works, Riverside Edition, 1884 ; Mosses 
from an Old 3Ia7ise, p. 297. 



Service 285 

and hardships of their fellow-men so widely, so 
keenly, so constantly as to-day. In one sense 
this is the honour and glory of our age. It is 
an evidence of quickened moral sensibility, a 
revival or renewal of the noblest capacities of 
our human nature. 

But in another sense it is the greatest peril A noble 
of our age. For it has been seized by the spirit ^^^yg^^\^ 
of scepticism and transformed into an ally of madness. 
annihilating doubt. It has been used as an 
argument against the possibility of discovering 
a moral order in such a "hungry, ill-condi- 
tioned world" as. this. INIan's inhumanity to 
man has been employed to prove God's indiffer- 
ence or injustice to man. The feeling of sor- 
row and perplexity has been aggravated by 
wild and whirling words into a passion of 
resentment against the present conditions of 
life. Rash and sweeping schemes for their 
total destruction have been proclaimed as a new 
gospel. Christianity has been first claimed as 
a supporter of these schemes, and then de- 
nounced and repudiated as the chief obstacle 
to their success. The cry goes up that the 
whole world is out of joint. " Everything is 
wrong and crooked and unfair : the race of 
man has been deceived and maltreated and 
oppressed by the creation of such an order of 



286 Service 

life as tlie present. If God created it, so much 
the worse for God. But it is almost certain 
that He did not create it, almost certain that 
there is no God. The world of inequality is 
man's mistake. There is but one thing to do, 
and that is to break it all up, at once and 
utterly, and begin anew. Create a new world 
if possible. If not, then let the old wreck sink 
and be blotted out, for it is worse, infinitely 
worse, than the blank desolation of an uncon- 
scious chaos." 
What shall This cry of anger and despair rings to- 

We do? 1 • 1 en 11 

day m the ears oi ail earnest and thoughtiui 
men and women. The element of sincerity, 
of truth, of justice, that thrills unmistakably 
through its strange, fierce music, stirs our 
hearts to the core. We are filled with per- 
turbation and distress and deep anxiety to 
know the right and to do it, to understand the 
meaning of this exceeding great and bitter cry, 
and the duty to which it calls us. Is it Indeed 
the utterance of true equity and wisdom ? Is 
it the voice of a new Adam, appearing after so 
many ages of delusion, with open eyes to con- 
demn the old world, and with ruthless hand to 
break it in pieces ? Must we welcome him and 
hearken to him and believe in him, as the true 
judge and regenerator and leader of mankind ? 



Service 287 

The very form of the question points the ChrisCs 
wa}^ to the only Master who can answer it. ^"'«'^"'''' "'^' 
Hawthorne's picture of the second Adam was 
a poetic dream. But the Apostle Paul uses the 
same figure to reveal a historic truth. ''The 
first man Adam became a living soul. The last 
Adam became a life-giving spirit. Howbeit 
that is not first which is spiritual, but that 
which is natural ; then that which is spiritual. 
The first man is of the earth, earthy ; the 
second man is of heaven." ^ The new Adam 
has already come upon the earth, eighteen cen- 
turies ago. He was called Jesus. With pure 
and perfect heart He entered into the world, 
not desolate and depopulate, but thronged with 
the myriads of toiling, suffering men. With 
clear eyes He looked upon their different con- 
ditions, their manifold inequalities, their out- 
ward and inward joys and sorrows. With 
steadfast heart He set Himself to the divine 
task of beginning a new humanity and inaugu- 
rating the kingdom of heaven on earth. 

He did not strive nor cry, neither was His His calm- 
voice heard in the streets. ^ He did not protest ^^^^^/'^ 

■•■ sanity. 

against the moral government of the universe, 

because one man was rich and another poor, 

one strong and another weak, one happy and 

1 1 Cor. XV. 45-47. 2 gt. Matt. xii. 19. 



288 Service 

another wretched, one good and another evil. 
He did not say that God must be unjust be- 
cause He has given, in things spiritual as well 
as in things temporal, much to one and little 
to another. He did not teach His followers 
that the only way to help the world was to 
rebel against this order, and refuse to submit 
to it, and denounce it, and fight against it. 
He did not even proclaim a social and political 
revolution. He was the most peaceful, orderly, 
obedient, loyal citizen of all that subject land of 
Palestine ; rendering unto Ctesar the things 
that were Csesar's, discharging every duty of 
His lowly lot with cheerful fidelity, and labour- 
ing patiently for His daily bread. 
He knows He was not blind, nor dull of heart to feel 

the secret. ^^iq troubles of life. The problem of inequality 
lay wide open before Him. But it did not 
agitate nor distract Him. He neither raved 
nor despaired. He was serene and sane. 

" He saw life clearly and He saw it whole." 

He looked through the problem to its true 
solution. He knew the secret which justifies 
the ways of God to man. He knew the secret 
by which an eternal harmony is to be brought 
into the apparent discords of life. He knew 
the secret by which men living in an unequal 



Service 289 

world, and accepting its inequality as the con- 
dition of their present existence, can still be- 
come partakers of a perfect, peaceful equity, 
and citizens of an invisible, imperishable city 
of God. That secret was none other than the 
highest, holiest doctrine of Jesus, the divine 
truth of election to service. 



Before we set our hearts to take in the Christ's 
meaning and the fulness of this truth, let us oo'^v^ifor 

. the present 

try to get them m tune for it by listening to world. 
some of the other teachings of Jesus which are 
meant to quiet and steady us in the contempla- 
tion of the unevenness of human existence. 

And first of all He reminds us that our real 
happiness in this world does not depend upon 
our outward condition, but upon our inward 
state. " The life is more than meat and the 
body than raiment."^ "A man's life consist- 
eth not in the abundance of the things which 
he possesseth."2 The land of wealth is not the 
empire of peace. Joy is not bounded on the 
north by poverty, on the east by obscurity, on 
the west by simplicity, and on the south by 
servitude. It runs far over these borders on 

1 St. Matt. vi. 25. 2 gt. Luke xii. 15. 
u 



290 Service 

every side. The lowliest, plainest, narrowest 
life may be the sweetest. Most of the disciples 
of Jesus were peasants, but they were as happy, 
as contented, even in this world, as if they had 
been princes. There was more gladness and 
singleness of heart in that frugal breakfast of 
broiled fish and bread beside the boats on the 
shore of the sea of Tiberias,^ than in the 
splendid feast in the house of Simon the Phari- 
see. Life has its compensations and its com- 
forts for all estates. Work means health. 
Obscurity means freedom. The best pleasures 
are those that are most widely diffused. 
The secret of I do not mean to say that Jesus overlooked 
the bitter hardships of toil under bad masters, 
under false and cruel and oppressive laws. I 
do not mean to say that He would not have 
been full of pity and indignation at the sight 
of the crushed and crippled state of great mul- 
titudes of human beings in our modern cities. 
But I am sure that He teaches us to believe 
that the real source of human misery is not in 
poverty, but in a bad heart; that envy is not a 
virtue, but a vice ; that life is a great gift "to all 
who will receive it cheerfully and contentedly, 
even in a world where its material things are 
unevenly distributed ; and that the true beati- 
1 St. John xxi. 1-13. 



happiness. 



Service 291 

tildes are not monopolies reserved for the few, 
but blessings within the reach of all, and glori- 
ously independent of all outward contrasts in the 
lives of men. Indeed it seems as if He would 
go even beyond this, and remind us that some 
of these blessings could not be ours except in a 
world of contrast and temporal inequality. Of 
the eight beatitudes which Jesus Himself pro- 
nounced, four at least, — the blessing of the 
mourners, and of the meek, and of the mer- 
ciful, and of the peace-makers, — imply the 
existence of differences and degrees among 
men ; and one — the blessing of those who are 
persecuted for righteousness' sake — is only 
possible in a world where evil is sometimes 
actually more powerful and prosperous than 
good. 

I have not been able to find a single word of The compen- 
Christ that looks forward to a time in which ^,yj^"* 
there shall be no more inequalities on earth, no 
more rich and poor, no more masters and ser 
vants, no more wise men, and no more babes. 
But there are many words of His that pierce 
wdth mild and gracious light through all these 
outward distinctions to reveal the truth that 
this kind of inequality is superficial and illusory, 
that the babes rejoice in beholding those mys- 
teries which are hidden from the wise and pru- 



292 Service 

dent, that servants are often nobler and more 
free than their masters, that the poor may 
have treasures laid up in heaven which are 
beyond all earthly reckoning, and that this is 
the true wealth which brings contentment and 
peace. 
Peace on It is a great mistake to suppose that Jesus 

preached a gospel which was melancholy and 
depressing for those who received it in this 
world. It is a great mistake to suppose that 
He taught men that they must resign them- 
selves to earthly misery and make the journey 
of life as a weary and mournful pilgrimage. 
He came to cheer and brighten the hearts of 
all who would accept His guidance and tread 
the path of virtue with courage and fidelity and 
hope. He came to give us rest in the midst of 
toil, and that refreshment which only comes 
from weariness in a good cause. He came to 
tell us not to despair of happiness, but to re- 
member that the only way to reach it on earth 
is to seek first usefulness, first the kingdom of 
God, and then the other things shall be added. 
He that loseth his life for Christ's sake shall 
not lose it but find it,^ — find it in deep inward 
contentment, 

" And vital feelings of delight," 
1 St. Matt. X. 39. 



Service 293 

which make up the true and incomparable joy 
of living. 

Jesus does not differ from other masters in The secret 
that He teaches us to scorn earthly felicity. 
The divine difference is that He teaches us how 
to attain earthly felicity, under all circum- 
stances, in prosperity and in adversity, in sick- 
ness and in health, in solitude and in society, 
by taking His yoke upon us, and doing the 
will of God, and so finding rest unto our souls. 
That is the debt which every child of God owes 
not only to God, but also to his own soul, — 
to find the real joy of living. 

" Joy is a duty," — so with golden lore Joy is a 

The Hebrew rabbis taught in days of yore. duty. 

And happy human hearts heard in their speech 
Almost the highest wisdom man can reach. 

But one bright peak still rises far above, 

And there the Master stands whose name is Love, 

Saying to those whom heavy tasks employ 

" Life is divine when duty is a joy." 

The second point in the teaching of Jesus The world 
which is meant to rectify our views of the un- 
evenness of the world, is His doctrine of a future 
life, — not a different life, but the same life mov- 
ing on under new conditions and to new issues. 
This world is not all. There is another world, a 
better age, a more perfect state of being, in which 



come. 



294 



Service 



The errors 
of time call 
for the 
balance of 
eternity. 



the sorrows and losses of those who now suffer 
unjustly will be compensated, and in which — 
let us not hesitate to say it as calmly and as 
firmly as Jesus said it — those who have un- 
justly and selfishly enjoyed their good things 
in this world will suffer in their turn. It is 
the fashion nowadays to sneer at such teaching 
as this; to call it " other- worldliness " ; to 
declare that it has no real power to strengthen 
or uplift the hearts of men. Jesus did not 
think so. Jesus made much of it. Jesus 
pressed home upon the hearts of men the con- 
solations and warnings of immortality. He 
showed the miserable failure of the man who 
filled his barns and lost his empty soul.^ He 
bade His disciples, when they suffered and were 
persecuted for righteousness' sake, ^' rejoice and 
be exceeding glad, for great is your reward 
in heaven." 2 

Let us not impoverish our gospel by flinging 
away, in our fancied superiority, this precious 
truth. It is impossible to justify the present 
fragmentary existence of man if we look at it 
and speak of it as the whole of his life. Earth 
has mysteries which naught but heaven can 
explain. Earth has sorrows which naught but 
heaven can heal. Yes, and earth has evils, 
1 St. Luke xii. 16-21. 2 st. Matt. v. 12. 



Service 295 

black and secret offences of man against man, 
false and foul treasons against the love of God, 
crimes which take a base advantage of His pa- 
tience and long-suffering and hide themselves 
like poisonous serpents in the shelter of the 
very laws which He has made for the good of 
the world, sins all entangled with the present 
structure of society and beyond the reach of 
human law, undiscoverable iniquities, unpardon- 
able and unpunishable cruelties, — which naught 
but hell can disclose and consume. The errors / 
of time call for the balance of eternity. Pa- 
tient labour, patient endurance, patient resig- 
nation in this present life shall be greatly 
rewarded in the life to come. Now is the day 
of toil and trial ; but the pay-day will surely 
dawn. Much of the best that is done in this 
world receives no earthly wages. Those to 
whom it is done, — the poor, the maimed, the 
lame, the blind, — " they cannot recompense 
thee ; but thou shalt be recompensed at the 
resurrection of the just."^ 

Thus Jesus teaches ; and He shows us that This un- 
the present order of inequality, so far from ^^'^^ y^ 
being an obstacle to this result, is the very Hon for the 
means by which it is to be accomplished. The ■^^ ^'^* 
discipline of this uneven life is the education 
1 St. Luke xiv. 14. 



296 



Service 



Fraternity 
better than 
equality. 



by which alone we can be prepared for the 
heavenly life. Jesus does not present Himself 
as a rectifier of life's unequal conditions of 
outward fortune. He distinctly refuses this 
office. "Man, who made me a judge or a 
divider over you ?"^ Jesus does not preach an 
equality which is synonymous with life on a 
dead level. He does not preach equality at 
all. He preaches fraternity. And frater- 
nity implies differences, — older and younger, 
stronger and weaker, higher and lower. The 
elder brother is the heir ; all that the father 
has is his ; but his sin lies in holding fast 
to his inheritance selfishly, in shutting out 
his younger brother, in forgetting and deny- 
ing that he is a brother at all.^ The distinc- 
tions of life are not meant to obscure, but to 
reveal and to beautify its best virtues. Out of 
dependence spring the sweet blossoms of grati- 
tude and loyalty. Out of mastership flow the 
refreshing streams of forbearance and justice 
and mercy. The apostle tells us that the love 
of money is a root of all kinds of evil.^ 
But Christ shows us the deeper truth that 
the right use of money is a means of all 
kinds of good. "It is more blessed to give 



1 St. Luke xii. 14. 2 gt. Luke xv. 25-32. 
3 1 Tim. vi. 10. 



Service 297 

than to receive."^ Every gift of Providence 
to us is an opportunity and therefore a re- 
sponsibility, and the blessing does not come 
with the gift until we recognize the responsi- 
bility, and use the opportunity. The mammon 
of unrighteousness can only be destroyed by 
a process of transformation which transmutes 
it into the pure gold of the celestial treasury. ^ 
The name of that process is charity. And the 
translation of that name is wise and holy 
love. 

Let us try to think distinctly. It is said Christianity 
nowadays that Christianity means communism, "'^ . ^"^' 
and that it is the duty of all Christians to 
give away everything that they possess. It 
is strange that Christ never proclaimed this 
duty except to one man, and that man was not 
a Christian.^ Of course it must be admitted 
at once that this w^ould be the duty of all 
Christians if it could be shown that it would 
be for the real good of their fellow-men. But 
this never has been shown. On the contrary, 
communism has always turned out badly. It 
was tried in Jerusalem, in a limited way, when 
the early Christians sold all that they had and 
made a common purse ; but it led, in less 

1 Acts XX. 35. 2 St. Luke xvi. 19. 

3 St. Mark x. 21. 



298 



Service 



Love thy 

neighbour 
as wisely 
and well as 
thyself. 



than ten years, to confusion and strife, and 
sank the Jerusalem church into a condition 
of pauperism and dependence upon the other 
churches, which had avoided the well-meant 
but dangerous experiment. It was tried in 
France, under atheistic auspices, and its fruit 
was wide-spread misery and injustice. It was 
tried to some degree in England, under a sys- 
tem of poor laws which were based upon the 
idea that every man had a right to eat whether 
he would work or not, and it resulted in such 
disorder and demoralization that it had to be 
discarded as a menace to society. 

There is nothing in the teachings of Christ 
which would make us blind to these plain 
lessons of history. On the contrary. He de- 
sires and commands us to discover and do that 
which will really bless and help our fellow- 
men. " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy- 
self," ^ — the same kind of love, the same in- 
ward regard for the higher ends and aims of 
life, which is the saving grace of the indi- 
vidual soul, is to be the saving grace of so- 
ciety. And what kind of love is that? It 
is a wise and holy love, a love which puts 
character first and comfort second, a love which 
seeks to purify and bless and uplift the whole 



1 St. Matt. xxii. 39. 



Service 299 

man. Such a love may be shown by withhokl- 
ing as truly as by bestowing. False charity 
pampers self and pauperizes others. True char- 
ity educates self by helping others. The so- 
called Christian Avho never gives is a false 
Christian. The Christian who gives carelessl}^ 
blindly, indiscriminately, however generously, 
is a very imperfect Christian. The Christian 
who gives thoughtfully, seriously, fraternally, 
bending his best powers to the accomplishment 
of a real benefaction of his fellow-men, bestow- 
ing himself with his gift, is in the true and 
only way of the following of Jesus. 

Preach this truth. Preach it home to the Every pHvi- 

i.n ' l^ 1^ e p c • ^ lege is a call 

hearts ot men, without tear or lavour tor rich ./^^^,„-^^ 
or poor. Preach it home to your own heart 
so close that it shall save you from the min- 
ister's besetting sins of spiritual selfishness and 
cant. Tell the Lady Bountiful that she is not 
called to discard her ladyhood, but to give her- 
self with all her refinements, with all her ac- 
complishments, with all that has been given to 
her of sweetness and light, to the ennobling 
service of humanity. Tell the Merchant-Prince 
that he is not called to abandon his place of 
influence and power, but to fill it in a princely 
spirit, to be a true friend and father to all who 
are dependent upon him, to make his prosper- 



300 Service 

ity a fountain of blessing to his fellow-men, to 
be a faithful steward of Almighty God. And 
then let us tell ourselves, as members of the 
so-called " educated classes," to whom God has 
given even greater gifts than those of rank and 
riches, — privileges of knowledge, opportunities 
of culture, free access to the stored-up wisdom 
of the ages, — let us tell ourselves with un- 
flinching fidelity that God will hold us to a 
strict account for all these things. If our salt 
loses its savour it shall be trodden under foot 
of men. If our culture separates us from hu- 
manity we shall be cast into the outer darkness. 
Our light must shine or be shamefully extin- 
guished. Every faculty and every gift we 
possess must be honestly and entirely conse- 
crated to the service of man, in Christ's name 
and for Christ's sake. This is the gospel for 
the present age, and for every age. This is 
Social re- the way in which the kingdom of heaven is to 
generation. ^^ established on earth. This is the way in 
which the inequality of this mortal life is to 
be transfigured and irradiated with a divine 
equity. "What we look for, work for, pray 
for, as believers, is a nation where class shall 
be bound to class by the fullest participation 
in the treasure of the one life ; where the mem- 



Service 301 

bers of each group of workers shall find in their 
work the development of their character and 
the consecration of their powers : where the 
highest ambition of men shall be to be leaders 
of their own class, so using their special powers 
without Avaste and following the common tradi- 
tions to noble issues : where each citizen shall 
know, and be strengthened by the knowledge, 
that he labours not for himself only, nor for 
his family, nor for his country, but for GOD."^ 

II 

Thus far the teaching of Christ leads us with Inequality 

^ •, • ij^T ^ j^T T p in the spirit- 

clear serenity in our understanding oi the dii- ^^^ world. 
ferences among men in the distribution of the 
goods of this present world. But the deeper 
problem still remains untouched. There is an 
apparent inequality in the bestowal of spiritual 
blessings. In the life of the soul also, it seems 
that much is given to one and little to another. 
Some men are born very close to the kingdom 
of heaven and powerfully drawn by unseen 
hands to enter its happy precincts. Other men 
are born far away from the gates of light, and 
it looks to us as if all the influences of their life 
were hindrances rather than helps to holiness. 

1 B. F. Westcott, Bishop of Durham, The Incarnation 
and Common Life (London, Macmillan, 1893), p. 82. 



302 



Service 



The doctrine 
of election. 



The search- 
ingquestion. 



False 
answers. 



There is an undeniable contrast in the religious 
world which can only be interpreted as a divine 
f oreordination, — that is to say, an act by which 
some men are set before others, given the pre- 
cedence, offered an earlier and apparently an 
easier opportunity of spiritual life. If God is 
sovereign, this act, by which the means of grace 
are unevenly dispensed, must be the result of a 
divine choice. 

The formal recognition of this choicQ is the 
doctrine of election. It is an inevitable doc- 
trine. It is founded upon facts which admit 
of no denial. And it brings every thoughtful 
and earnest soul face to face with the question 
of questions, upon the answer to which the 
nature and reality of religion depend. 

Is God arbitrary, is God partial, is God unjust ' 
Does He bless some of His children and leave 
the rest under an irremediable curse without a 
single reason which can be exhibited to human 
faith and justified in perfect love ? In the last 
and highest realm of life, the realm of the spirit, 
does He make it more blessed to receive than 
to give, and exercise His sovereignty in favour- 
itism, and establish heaven as a kingdom of 
infinite and eternal and inexplicable inequality ? 

It is an idle thing to answer this question by 
an appeal to God's absolute right to dispose of 



Service 303 

all His creatures as He will. For the very ^narhi- 
essence of true religion is the faith that He is 
such a God that He wills to dispose of all His 
creatures wisely and fairly and in perfect love. 
And the very essence of a true revelation, as 
the message which calls religion into being, is 
that it makes God's wisdom and fairness and 
love manifest, and so helps us to understand 
and adore and trust Him, not only for ourselves 
but for the whole world. 

It is an idle thinar to answer this question by ^'^ irrespon. 
saymg that God is under no obligation to be 
good to everybody, and therefore that He may 
be good to whomsoever He pleases. The idea 
of an irresponsible God is a moral mockery. 
Poisonous doubt exhales from it as malaria from 
a swamp. To teach that all men are God's 
debtors, and that therefore it is right for Him 
to remit the debt of one man, and to exact the 
penalty from another to the last farthing, is to 
teach what is logically true and morally false. 
Our hearts recoil from such a doctrine. If 
God has made us, and made us spiritual 
paupers, utterly incapable of anything good, 
we are not His debtors. Jesus teaches us that 
God asks of us only to give as freely as we have 
received.^ He demands only that which He 
1 St. Matt. X. 8. 



304 



Service 



A God 
whose glory 
is not 
goodness. 



Election 
pey^verted in 
human 
theology. 



Himself has made us able to pay. And He 
forgives like the good master in the parable, 
with a free pardon which needs but the con- 
fession of helplessness and poverty to call it 
forth. 1 

-It is an idle thing to answer this question by 
an appeal to ignorance, and to say that God 
elects some men to be saved and leaves the rest 
of mankind to be lost simply for His own un- 
searchable and inexplicable glory ! For God's 
glory, as revealed by religion, is identical with 
His goodness. Faith, true and joyful and up^ 
lifting faith, answers only to a gospel which 
makes that identity more clear and luminous, 
and shows that the divine election in the realm 
of grace is perfectly consistent with that wide 
and deep love wherewith God so loved the 
whole world that He sent His only begotten 
Son that whosoever believeth in Him should 
not perish but have everlasting life. 

Now it is because men have forgotten this 
that they have found no answer, or a false and 
misleading answer, to the problem of inequality 
in the spiritual world. It is because they have 
torn the doctrine of election from its roots in 
the divine love, and petrified it with unholy 
logic, that it has lost its beauty, its perfume, 
1 St. Matt, xviii. 27. 



Service 305 

its power of fruitfulness to everlasting life. 
We must go back from the dead skeleton as it 
is preserved in the museum of theology to the 
living plant as it blossoms in the field of the 
Bible. We must go back of Jonathan Edwards, 
and back of John Calvin, and back of Augustine, 
to St. Paul, and see how, under his hand, all 
the mysterious facts of election as they are 
unfolded in human history, break into flower 
at last in the splendid faith that "God hath 
shut up all unto disobedience that He might 
have mercy upon all." ^ We must go still 
farther back, to Christ, and learn from Him 
that election is simply the way in which God 
uses His chosen ones to bless the world, — 
the divine process by which the good seed is 
sown and scattered far and wide and the 
heavenly harvest multiplied a thousand-fold. 
" I elected you," He says to His disciples and 
to us, " I elected you, and appointed you, that 
ye should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit 
should abide. "2 

Christ's doctrine of election is a living, Christ's doc- 

r • r 1 ^ • t • i trine of 

fragrant, iruitiul doctrine. It is the most election to 
beautiful thing in Christianity. It is the very service. 
core and substance of the gospel, translated 

1 Komans xi. 82. 

2 St. John XV. 16. 



306 



Service 



Christ as 
the elect 
servant. 



The disciple 
must be as 
his Lord. 



from the heart of God into the life of man. It 
is the divine law of service in spiritual things. 
It is the supreme truth in the revelation of an 
all-glorious love ; the truth that God chooses 
men not to be saved alone, but to be saved by 
saving others, and that the greatest in the king- 
dom of heaven is he who is most truly the 
servant of all. 

Is not this true of Christ Himself ? He is 
the great example of what it means to be elect. 
He is the beloved Son in whom the Father 
is well pleased. And He says " Behold, I am 
in the midst of you as he that serveth."^ Ser- 
vice was the joy and crown of His life. Service 
was the refreshment and the strength of His 
soul, the angel's food, the "meat to eat" of 
which His disciples did not know.^ 

Was not this the lesson that He was always 
teaching them by practice and by precept, that 
they must be like Him if they would belong 
to Him, that they must share His service if 
they would share His election ! " I have ap- 
peared unto thee for this purpose," He said 
to Saul, "to make thee a servant (^vTrrjperrjv, a 
rower in the ship}, and a witness both of those 
things which thou hast seen and of the things 

1 St. Luke xxii. 27. 

2 St. John iv. 32. 



Service 307 

in the which I will appear unto tliee."^ The 
vision of Christ is the call to service. And if 
Paul had not been obedient to the heavenly 
vision could Saul have made his calling and 
election sure ? But he answered it with a noble 
faith. " It pleased God to reveal His son in 
me in order that I might preach him among 
the nations/"^ Henceforward, wherever he 
might be, among his friends in Cilicia, in the 
dungeon at Philippi, on the doomed vessel 
drifting across the storm-tossed Adriatic, in 
the loneliness of his Roman prison, this was 
the one object of his life, to be a faithful ser- 
vant of Christ, and therefore, as Christ was, a 
faithful servant of mankind. ^ 

How can we interpret Christ's parables, with- Parables of 
out this truth? The parables of the Pounds ^^^^ ^^^. 

^ ana service. 

and the Talents are both pictures of election 
to service. They both exhibit the sovereignty 
of God in distributing His gifts ; they both 
turn upon the idea of man's accountability for 
receiving and using them; and they both declare 
that the reward will be proportioned to fidel- 
ity in serving. The nature and meaning of 
this is explained by Christ in His great descrip- 
tion of the judgment, which immediately fol- 
lows the parable of the Talents in St. Matthew's 
1 Acts xxvi. 16. 2 Gal. i. 16. » 2 Cor. iv. 5. 



308 Service 

Gospel.^ Many of those who have known Him 
will be rejected at last because they have not 
served their fellow-men. Many of those who 
have not known Him will be accepted because 
they have ministered lovingly, though igno- 
rantly, to the wants and sorrows of the world. 
Service, the Service is the key-note of the heavenly king- 
the king- dom, and he who will not strike that note shall 
dom. have no part in the music. The King in the 

parable of the Wedding Feast ^ chose and called 
his servants, not to sit down at ease in the 
palace, but to go out into the highways and 
bid every one that they met, to come to the 
marriage. And if one of those servants had 
refused or betrayed his mission, if he had neg- 
lected his Master's business, and sat down on 
the steps of the palace or walked pleasantly in 
the garden until the supper was ready, do you 
suppose that he would have found a place or a 
welcome at the feast? His soul would have 
stood naked and ashamed without the wedding- 
garment of love. For this is the nature of 
God's kingdom, that a selfish religion abso- 
lutely unfits a man from entering or enjoying 
it. Its gate is so strangely strait that a man 
cannot pass through it if he desires and tries 

1 St. Matt. XXV. 31-46. 

2 St. Matt. xxii. 1-13. 



sion. 



Service 309 

to come alone ; but if he will bring others with 
him, it is wdde enough and to spare. 

Who seeks for heaven alone to save his soul, 
May keep the path, but will not reach the goal ; 
While he who walks in love may wander far, 
Yet God will bring him where the blessed are. 

How wonderfully all this comes out in the The prayer 
great intercessory prayer of Christ at the last 
supper.^ That prayer is the last and highest 
utterance of the love wherewith Christ, having 
loved His own which were in the world, loved 
them unto the end. He prays for His chosen 
ones : " I pray for them : I pray not for the 
world but for those whom Thou hast given Me." 
" Holy Father, keep them in Thy name which 
Thou hast given Me, that they may be one even 
as We are. For their sakes I consecrate Myself, 
that they themselves also may be consecrated 
in truth. Neither for these only do I pray, but 
for them also that believe on Me through their 
word ; that they may all be one, even as Thou, 
Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also 
may be in Us ; that the world may believe that 
Thou didst send Me." How the prayer rises, 
like some celestial music, through all the inter- 
woven notes of different fellowships, the fellow- 
ship of the Father with the Son, the fellowship 

1 St. John xvii. 



310 Service 

of the Master witli the disciples, the fellowship 
of the disciples with each other, until at last it 
strikes the grand chord of universal love. Not 
for the world Christ prays, but for the disciples 
in the world, in order that they may pray for 
the world, and serve the world, and draw the 
world to faith in Him. And so, in truth, while 
He prays thus for His disciples. He does pray 
for the whole world. Circle beyond circle, orb 
beyond orb, like waves upon water, like light 
from the sun, the prayer, the faith, the conse- 
crating power spread from that upper room 
until they embrace all mankind in the sweep of 
the divine intercession. The special, personal, 
elective love of Christ for His own is not 
exclusive ; it is magnificently and illimitably 
inclusive. He loved His disciples into loving 
their fellow-men. He lifted them into union 
with God ; but He did not lift them out of 
union with the world ; and every tie that 
bound them to humanity, every friendship, 
every fellowship, every link of human inter- 
course, was to be a channel for the grace of 
God that bringeth salvation, that it might 
appear to all men.^ 
Christ's This is Christ's ideal : a radiatinsf ofospel : 

a kingdom of overflowing, conquering love ; a 
1 Titus ii. 11. 



Service 311 

church that is elected to be a means of blessing 
to the human race. This ideal is the very 
nerve of Christian missions, at home and 
abroad, the effort to preach the gospel to every 
creature, not merely because the world needs 
to receive it, but because the Church will be 
rejected and lost unless she gives it. 'Tis not 
so much a question for us whether any of our 
fellow-men can be saved without Christianity. 
The question is whether we can be saved if we 
are willing to keep our Christianity to our- 
selves. And the answer is. No ! The only 
religion that can really do anything for me, is 
the religion that makes me want to do some- 
thing for you. The missionary enterprise is 
not the Church's afterthought. It is Christ's 
forethought. It is not secondary and optional. 
It is primary and vital. Christ has put it into 
the very heart of His gospel. We cannot 
really see Him, or know Him, or love Him, 
unless we see and know and love His ideal for 
us, the ideal which is embodied in the law of 
election to service. 

For this reason the spirit of missions has Missions 
always been the saving and purifying power Qj^ristian- 
of the Christian brotherhood. Whenever and Hy- 
wherever this ideal has shined clear and strong. 



312 



Servi 



ice 



Missions 
emancipated 
the early 
church. 



Missions 
keep the 
gospel pure. 



it has revealed the figure of the Christ more 
simply and more brightly to His disciples, and 
guided their feet more closely in the way of 
peace and joy and love. 

In the first century it was the spirit of for- 
eign missions that saved the Church from the 
bondage of Jewish formalism. Paul and his 
companions could not live without telling the 
world that Christ Jesus came to seek and save 
the lost — lost nations as well as lost souls. 
The heat of that desire burned up the fetters 
of bigotry like ropes of straw. The gospel 
could not be preached to all men as a form ot 
Judaism. But the gospel must be preached to 
all men. Therefore it could not be a form oi 
Judaism. The argument was irresistible. It 
was the missionary spirit that made the Eman- 
cipation Proclamation of Christianity. 

In the dark ages the heart of religion was 
kept beating by the missionary zeal and efforts 
of such men as St. Patrick, and St. Augustine, 
and Columba and Aiden, and Boniface, and 
Anskar, who brought the gospel to our own 
fierce ancestors in the northern parts of Europe 
and wild islands of the sea. In the middle 
ages it was the men who founded the great 
missionary orders, St. Francis and St. Dominic, 
who did most to revive the faith and purify 



Service 313 

the life of the Church. And when the Refor- 
mation had lost its first high impulse, and 
sunken into the slough of dogmatism ; when 
the Protestant churches had become entangled 
in political rivalries and theological controver- 
sies, while the hosts of philosophic infidelity 
and practical godlessness were sweeping in 
apparent triumph over Europe and America, 
it was the spirit of foreign missions that 
sounded the 7'eveille to the Christian world, 
and lit the signal fire of a new era — an era of 
simpler creed, more militant hope, and broader 
.ove — an era of the Christianity of Christ. 
The desire of preaching the gospel to every 
creature has drawn the Church back from her 
bewilderments and sophistications closer to the 
simplicity that is in Christ, and so closer to that 
divine ideal of Christian unity in which all 
believers shall be one in Him. You cannot 

4 

preach a complicated gospel, an abstract gos- 
pel, to every creature. You cannot preach a 
gospel that is cast in an inflexible mould of 
thought, like Calvinism, or Arminianism, or 
Lutheranism, to every creature. It will not 
fit. But the gospel, the only gospel which is 
divine, must be preached to every creature. 
Therefore, these moulds and forms cannot be an 
essential part of it. And so we work our way 



314 



S 



ervice 



One mes- 
sage and 
■many ways 
of preach- 
ing it. 



back out of the tangle of human speculations 
toward that pure, clear, living message which 
Paul carried over from Asia to Europe, the 
good news that God is in Christ, reconciling 
the world to Himself. 

This is the gospel for an age of doubt, and 
for all ages wherein men sin and suffer, question 
and despair, thirst after righteousness and long 
for heaven. There are a thousand ways of 
preaching it, with lips and lives, in words and 
deeds ; and all of them are good, provided only 
the preacher sets his whole manhood earnestly 
and loyally to his great task of bringing home 
the truth as it is in Jesus to the needs of his 
brother-men. The forms of Christian preach- 
ing are manifold. The spirit is one and the 
same. New illustrations and arguments and 
applications must be found for every age and 
every race. But the truth to be illuminated 
and applied is as changeless as Jesus Christ 
Himself, in whose words it is uttered and in 
whose life it is incarnate, once and forever. 
The types of pulpit eloquence are as different 
as the characters and languages of men. But 
all of them are vain and worthless as sound- 
ing brass and tinkling cymbals, unless they 
speak directly and personally and joyfully 
of that divine love which is revealed in 



gospel. 



Service 315 

Christ in order that all who Avill believe in 
it may be saved from doubt and sin and self- 
ishness in the everlasting kingdom of the lov- 
ing God. 

This is the gospel which began to shine The only 
through the shadows of this earth at Bethlehem, 
where the Son of God became the child of Mary, 
and was manifested in perfect splendour on 
Calvary, where the Good Shepherd laid down 
His life for the sheep. For eighteen centuries 
this simple, personal, consistent gospel has been 
the leading light of the best desires and hopes 
and efforts of humanity. It is the one bright 
star that shines, serene and steady, through the 
confusion of our perplexed, struggling, doubting 
age. He wdio sees that star, sees God. He 
who follows that star, shall never perish. It has 
dawned u^Don my heart so clearly and so con- 
vincingly that the one thing I have cared and 
tried to do in these lectures is to make it plain 
that this is the essence of Christianity, the only 
gospel that is worth preaching in all ways to 
all men, that Jesus Christ is God who loves us 
in order that we may learn to love one another. 
But if I have failed to make this view of reli- 
gion clear, if an imperfect utterance has be- 
clouded and obscured the message, at least let 
this last word be plain, at least let nothing hide 



The last 
word. 



316 Service 

from your soul or from mine, this supreme, 
saving truth of election to service. 

The vision of God in Christ is the greatest 
gift in the world. It binds those who receive 
it to the highest and most consecrated life. To 
behold that vision is to be one of God's elect. 
But the result of that election depends upon 
the giving of ourselves to serve the world for 
Jesus' sake. Noblesse oblige. 
Believers Let US not miss the meaning of Christianity 

in Christ, . i i • 

the servants ^^ it comes to US and claims US. We are 
of God's love chosen, we are called, not to die and be saved, 

to the whole . ^ 

world. but to live and save others. The promise oi 

Christ is a task and a reward. For us there is 
a place in the army of God, a mansion in the 
heaven of peace, a crown in the hall of victory. 
But whether we shall fill that place and dwell 
in that mansion and wear that crown, depends 
upon our willingness to deny ourselves and take 
up our cross and follow Jesus. Whatever our 
birthright and descent, whatever our name 
and profession, whatever our knowledge of 
Christian doctrine and our performance of 
Christian worship may be, — when the great 
host is gathered in the City of God, with 
tattered flags and banners glorious in their 
bloodstained folds, with armour dinted and 
swords worn in the conflict, with wounds which 



Service 317 

tell of courage and patient endurance and 
deathless loyalty, — when the celestial knight- 
hood is assembled at the Round Table of the 
King, our name will be unspoken, our crown 
will hang above an empty chair, and our place 
will be given to another, unless we accept now, 
with sincere hearts, the only gospel which can 
deliver us from the inertia of doubt and the 
seltishness of sin. We must enter into life by 
giving ourselves to the personal Christ who un- 
veils the love of the Father in a Human Life, 
and calls us with Divine Authority to submit 
our Liberty to God's Sovereignty in blessed 
and immortal Service to our fellow-men for 
Christ's sake. 



INDEX 



Abbott, Lyman, Christian 
Thought, 410 note ; The 
Evolution of Christianity, 
417 note. 

Absolutism, difficulties of, 263. 

Ackerman, L., Ma Vie, quoted, 
250. 

Acts, The, of the Apostles, 62. 

Adam, a new, 286. 

Adams, Professor, 12. 

Aiden, 312. 

Altruism, 37, 38. 

Ambrose of Milan, 101. 

America, the new crusade in, 
37. 

Ananias, 100. 

Antoninus Pius, 104. 

Aquinas, Thomas, 50, 141. 

Aristotle, 73. 

Arius, 110. 

Armstrong, Prof. A. C, Jr., 34. 

Arnold, Matthew, q^toted, 19. 

Art, Christ in, 128; early- 
Christian, 128. 

Atonement, the value of the, 
162. 

Authority is what the age de- 
mands, 198. 



Balfour, Hon. A. J., A De- 
fence of Philosophic Doubt, 
48, 325, 340, 342 notes ; Foun- 
dations of a Belief, 52. 

Baptized fatalism, 217. 

Barry, Alfred, Some Lights 
of Science on the Faith, 68, 
371 note. 

Baudelaire, Charles, 18, 29. 

Baxter, Richard, 50. 

Beauchamp, Henry, Thoughts 
of an Automaton, 210. 

Beaumont and Fletcher, 73. 

Berthelot, M., 13. 

Bettelheim, Anton, Cosmopo- 
lis, 334 note. 

Beyschlags, N'eio Testament 
Theology, 62, 359, 396, 399, 
416 notes. 

Bible : bending the Bible to fit 
definitions, 132. 

Biblical scholarship (modern), 
143. 

Boniface, 312. 

Bourget, Paul, Psychologie 
Contemporaine, 5 note, 17, 
28, 30, 324 note, 333 note; 
Cosmopolis, 17. 



319 



320 



Index 



Bradford, Amory H., Hered- 
ity and Christian Prob- 
lems, 74, 353 note, 411 7iote. 

Brain, the organ of the mind, 
221. 

Brainerd, David, 79. 

Brooks, Bishop, 54 ; Sermon 
for Trinity Sunday, 112. 

Browning, Robert, 33; Saul, 
quoted, 164. 

Bruce, Prof. A. B., St. Paul's 
Conception of Christianity, 
440 note; The Humiliation 
of Christ, 134 ; Kingdom of 
God, 176, 181. 

Bushnell, Horace, The Divin- 
ity of Christ, 125. 

Butler, Bishop, 7, 8 note, 50. 

Byzantine art, 130. 

Calvary is victory, 278, 

Calvin, John, 50, 73, 305. 

Calvinism, 241. 

Candlish, Dr. James S., King- 
dom of God, 176. 

Carlyle, Thomas, 16; Heroes, 
86 note. 

Catacombs, pictures of Christ 
in, 129. 

Cayley, Professor, 12. 

Chalcedon, 155. 

Charity, the new, 170; true, 
299. 

Chillingworth, William, 50, 

Christ, Gospel of, 54 ; the per- 
son of, 58 ; the reality of, 
58 ; was his own Gospel, 60 ; 
the life of the Church flowed 
from, 62; the influence of 
Christianity came from, 64 ; 
the magic of His name 64 ; 



the personal power of Christ 
continues, 66; the central 
figure of Christianity, 66; 
the mystery of, 69; the 
effect of His presence, 70; 
unique, 72 ; solitary in his- 
tory, 73; sinless, 74; the 
power of His cross, 76; to 
know Him the one thing 
needful, 78; the answer to 
sceptics, 87; the creator of 
Christianity, 88; who then 
is Christ, 89 ; the historic 
answer, 90 ; Godhead slowly 
revealed, 90 ; a supreme au- 
thority ^to judge the world, 
95; the Son of God, 96; the 
new theology, 105 ; a per- 
sonal revelation of the Di- 
vine Being, 106; His life 
without admitting His di- 
vinity, 118 ; divine love, 120 ; 
is God with us, 121 ; hu- 
manity, 126 ; in art, 128 ; 
portraits of, 129; portrait, 
Byzantine, 130; hiding the 
face of, 132 ; manhood a vest- 
ure, 138; of the Gospels, 
144; of the Epistles, 145; 
the new study of, 154 ; find- 
ing of the human Christ, 
164 ; teaching, the kingdom 
of heaven the keynote of, 
174; the doctrine of, 182; 
record of His teaching, 184 ; 
words and life interpret each 
other, 186; teaching, the 
authority of, 189; teaching, 
the originality of, 190; 
teaching, universal, 193; 
doctrine small in compass, 



Index 



321 



103; doctrine never fails, 
104 ; the siniplieity that is in 
His teaching, lOti; loyalty 
to His teaching, 107; the su- 
preme authority, 100; our 
great task to learn his creed, 
200 ; says liberty is real, 226 ; 
His preaching a Gospel of 
liberty, 227 ; is God's call to 
faith, 232; on heredity, 233; 
our helper, 236; doctrine of 
election, 305 ; parables, 307 ; 
Ideal, 310. 

Christhood, what is meant by 
the, 02. 

Christian leadership, need 
of, 38; belief, the new line 
of, 02; doctrine and the 
Deity of Christ, 108; view 
of God and world, 361 
note ; preacher, the duty 
of, 316. 

Christianity and Christ, 50; 
the rock of, 110; practical, 
171 ; evidences of, 102 ; and 
communism, 207. 

Christians despised for wor- 
shipping Christ, 104. 

Christless man can never 
preach Christ, 202. 

Christology, modern examples 
of false, 136. 

Clarke, Samuel, 50. 

Clerk-Maxwell, Professor, 12. 

Clifford, W. K., 15, 30, 208. 

College settlements, 38. 

Columba, 312. 

Conscience, the indomitable, 
35. 

Couperus, Louis, Destiny, 213. 

Crassus, 73. 

2g 



Creed, The, of Christ, 200; of 

necessity, 212. 
Crispi, Signor, 34. 
Crosby, Howard, The True 

Humanity of Christ, quoted, 

155. 
Cross: power of the cross of 

Christ, 76. 
Crusade against scepticism, 37. 
Cud worth, Ralph, 50. 

Darwin, the testimony of a 
doubter, 67. 

Deity of Christ, the strength 
of the Gospel, 122. 

De Pressense,/e'su5 Christ, 162. 

Desjardins, Paul, 18, 27, 36. 

Determinism proved, 218. 

Devout men of pure science, 
12. 

Disciple, The, must be as his 
Lord, 306. 

Discrimination, 260. 

Divine, The, Orderliness, 255 ; 
immanence, 255 ; omnipo- 
tence self-limited in action, 
265 ; omniscience, 268. 

Divinity of Jesus Christ, The, 
355 note. 

Doctrine of Christ, the basis of 
His conduct, 187 ; attacked, 
7. 

Dogmas darken the view of 
Christ, 131. 

Dogmatic theology and mod- 
ern doubt, 50. 

Dogmatics, renaissance of, 51. 

Dorner, History of Protestant 
Theology, SlSnote. 

Doubt not a crime but a 
malady, 23. 



322 



Index 



Doubting age, 6. 

Du Bois, Reymoud, 13. 

Du Maurier, George, 18. 

Earth, militant on, 268. 

Edwards, Jonathan, 50, 218, 
305. 

Election, the doctrine of, 302 ; 
perverted in human theol- 
ogy, 304. 

Eliot, George, 17, 25. 

Emerson, 16. 

Endurance, strength of, 275. 

English sceptics, 25. 

Ephrem Syrus, 101, 133. 

Epistles, The, of Paul, 62. 

Erasmus, quoted in Gore, 142. 

Everlasting, The, Reality of 
Religion, 329 note. 

Evil, origin of evil not in God, 
266; power of, 272; strug- 
gle against, 274. 

Fairbairn, A. M., The Place 
of Christ in Modern The- 
ology, 51, 153, 357 note, 364 
note, 393 note. 

Faith not changed but en- 
larged, 10 ; sorrow of losing, 
25 ; the renaissance of, 33 ; 
a starting-point for, 53 ; the 
original process of, 91 ; three 
vital points made plain to 
faith, 151; these points de- 
fended, 152. 

False interpretations of 
Christ's teaching, 175. 

Fatalism, modern, 206. 

Felicity, the secret of, 293. 

Ferrers, Professor, 12. 

Fiction, gloomy, 17. 



Fisher, Prof. G. P., 219; 
Grounds of Theistic and 
Christian Belief, 62 note, 
424 note. 

Fiske, John, 247; Destiny of 
Man, 326 note ; Idea of God, 
327 note. 

Fitzgerald, Edward, Rubdiydt 
of Omar Khayyam, quoted, 
217. 

Flaubert, 29 ; Madame Bovary^ 
17. 

Foreknowledge, 269. 

Foster, John, 5. 

France, new crusade in, 36. 

Fraternity better than equal- 
ity, 296. 

Free-will, 219 ; is possible, 225. 

French sceptics, 27. 

Froude, 16. 

Gibbon, Edward, Roman Em- 
pire, 83. 

Gilder, Richard Watson, quo- 
tation, 79. 

Gladden, Washington, Ruling 
Ideas of the Present Age, 
434 note. 

God seen through Christ, 107 ; 
a personal, 117; the true 
view of, 160; is love, 161; 
suffers with and for us, 162 ; 
helps those who help them- 
selves, 238; the Father, our 
Captain, 251 ; in His world, 
254; reign of God through 
law, 258 ; is a fair master, 
265; the rock of our trust, 
273; in history, 276; and 
truth, 277 ; is God unjust, 302. 

Godet, 154. 



Index 



323 



God's sympathy, doubts dis- 
solve in the thoujxht of, 1G3; 
sovereignty, two spheres of, 
267. 

Goodness, power of, 272, 

Grordon, Charles, 79. 

Grordon, Dr. George A., The 
Trinity the Ground of Hu- 
manity, 112; Christ of To- 
day, 52, 2^2 note, 374 note. 

Gore, Canon C. C, 135, 13t); 
The Incarnation of the Son 
of God, 134, 351 note, 366 
note ; Dissertations, 384 
note, 427 note. 

Gospel, The, of a Person, 
43; message clear as light, 
53; of a fact, 55; of a 
force, 59; of a Saviour, 
75; of the Incarnation 
adapted to this age, 113; 
A., for the whole circle of 
human life, 173 ; the fourth, 
178. 

Gospels: the four Gospels 
must be studied, 177. 

Greer, David H. , The Preacher, 
322 note. 

Gregory the Great, 102. 

Hadrian, Emperor, 104. 

Happiness depends upon our 
inward state, 289 ; the secret 
of, 290. 

Hardy, Thomas, 17 ; Jude the 
Obscure, 30. 

Harris, S., The Self-Revela- 
tion of God, 51. 

Harris, George, Moral Evolu- 
tion, 436 note. 

Harrison, Frederic, 15. 



Hartmann, 24, 33; RrUf/ions- 
philosophie Selbstersetzung 
des Christenthums, 33; 
Philosophic des UnbeiousS' 
ten, M. 

Havclock, Henrj', 79. 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 283. 

Hazard, 230. 

Hazzard, Rowland, Freedom 
of Mind in Willing, 219. 

Heathen, testimony of the, 
103; writers, 103. 

Heaven, triumphant in, 268. 

Hebrews, the epistle to the, 
149. 

Hennell, Charles, Inquii-y 
Concerning the Origin of 
Christianity, 25. 

Heredity not final, 222. 

Hilary of Poictiers, 101. 

Historical Christ, 58. 

Hitchcock, Rev. Dr. Roswell 
D., A Complete Analysis of 
the Holy Bible, 176. 

Hodge, Charles, 50. 

Hodge, A. A., Popular Lect- 
ures, 241. 

Holy Spirit, The, 236. 

Homoonsia, 155. 

Hooker, Richard, 50. 

Horton, R. F., Verbum Dei, 
322 note. 

Human, The, Life of the 
Father, 81; Life in God, 
125. 

Humanity, a new relation to, 
94. 

Hutton, R. H., 27; Contern- 
porary Thought and Think- 
ers, 417 note. 

Huxley, T. H., 15 ; quoted, 208. 



324 



Index 



Hymns of the Greek Church, 

101 ; the testimony of, 101. 
Hypnotized, the age, 241. 

Ibsen's plays, 27 note ; Ghosts, 
214. 

Ignatius, Epistles of, to the 
Trallians, 377 note. 

Illiugworth, J. R., Personality 
Human and Divine, 344 
note, 358. 

Incarnation, The, 114, 115 ; his- 
torically consistent, 118 ; 
satisfies the human heart, 
120; old definitions inade- 
quate, 156. 

Inequality in the spiritual 
world, 301. 

Influence of Fiction, SS2 note. 

Inspiration of heroism, 274. 

Irenaeus, quoted, 94, 376 note. 

Jackson, Dr. J. Hughlings, Dis- 
eases of Nervous System, 221. 

James, William, Psychology, 
224, 230, 413 note, 414 note. 

Jesus, search after, 141 ; secret 
of, 258; the new Adam, 287. 

Jesus Christ's doctrine small 
in compass, 193. 

John, 100. 

Jonson, Ben, 73. 

Joy is a duty, 293. 

Judas, 99. 

Justin Martyr, First Apology, 
quoted, 104; Dialogue with 
Trypho, 65 note. 

Kant, 210. 

Kelley, James P., The Laiv of 
Service, 441 note, 443 note. 



Kelvin, Lord (Sir William 
Thomson), 12, 220. 

Kempis, Thomas a, 79; Imi- 
tation of Christ, 66. 

Kenosis, the, 147. 

Kepler, 12. 

Ker, John, Sermons, 440 note. 

Kidd, Mr. Benjamin, Social 
Evolution, 34. 

Kinship of man to God, 159. 

Kingdom, The, of heaven the 
keynote of Christ's teach- 
ing, 174. 

Kingsley, Charles, 79. 

Kinsley, William W., Old 
Faiths and New Facts, 431 
note. 

Knowledge, the expansion of, 
11. 

Lacordaire, Pere, 53. 

La Farge, John, Considera- 
tions on Painting, 376 note. 

Laplace, 247. 

Latham, Henrj'-, Pastor Pas- 
torum, 61. 

Lentulus, Epistle of, 129. 

Lesson of encouragement in 
sufferings of doubt, 24. 

Liberty, sovereignty, and ser- 
vice, 206. 

Liberty, 207. 

Liddon, Canon, 53 ; Divinity 
of Our Lord, 138. 

Life, sad aspect of, 27 ; the 
regnant idea, 157; the un- 
evenness and apparent in- 
justice of human life, 284; 
the compensation of, 291. 

Lightfoot, Bishop, Supernat- 
ural Religion, 62 note. 



Index 



325 



Lincoln, A., 118. 

Lisle, Leconte de, 18. 

Literature as an index of life, 
4 ; mirror of, and the shad- 
ow of doubt, 15. 

Littre, Emile, 22. 

Liturgies, testimony of early, 
102. 

Liturgy of Protestant Episco- 
pal Church, 103. 

Lombard, Peter, 134, 141. 

Lombroso, 45. 

Lord, The, of Hosts, 270. 

Loti, Pierre, La GaliUe, 73 
note, 190. 

Love, Christ's divine love, 
120; is the example of 
Christ, 161 ; thy neighbour 
as thyself, 298. 

Lowell, James Russell, The 
Present Crisis, quoted, 278. 

Loyalty to Christ's teaching, 
197. 

Lucian, 104. 

Luther, 73. 

Lux Mundi, 323 note, 363, 
367, 444 note. 

Mabie, H. W., Essays on Nat- 
ure and Culture, 255. 

McCabe, L. D., Divine Nesci- 
ence, 428 note. 

McCheyne, Robert, 79. 

Man, meanness of, 28 ; to God, 
kinship of, 159; weakness 
of, 234. 

Man's inhumanity to man, 285. 

Marcus Aurelius, 104. 

Martyn, Henry, 79. 

Materialism disavowed but 
taught, 207. 



Maupassant, Guy de, 17, 
215. 

Maurice, F. D., 23. 

Melancholia, 30. 

Melancholy marionettes, 215. 

Melancthon, 73. 

Metaphysical negation, 14. 

Mill, J. ^., Essays on Religion, 
72 note. 

Miracles not against nature, 
257. 

Misery, source of human, not 
in poverty, but in a bad 
heart, 290. 

Misoneism, 45. 

Missionary zeal, 312. 

Missions essential to Chris- 
tianity, 311; and the early 
church, 312; keep the Gos- 
pel pure, 312. 

Momerie, A. W., Personality, 
346 note. 

Moody, Dwight L., 54. 

Moral problem, 205; judg- 
ments assume liberty, 223. 

Morley, John, 16. 

Moxom, Philip S., From Jer- 
usalem to Nicsea, 370 note. 

Mozley, J. B., Ruling Ideas in 
Early Ages, 425 note. 

Mulford, The Republic of God, 
51. 

Miiller, Julius, 153. 

Munger, T. T., The Freedom 
of Faith, 401 note. 

Myers, F. W. H., 26, 46; Sci- 
ence and a Future Life, 
337 note, 339 note. 

Napoleon, 73. 
Newton, 12. 



326 



Index 



Nordeau, Max, Degeneration, 
45, 404 note. 

Novels, modern, 5; of natu- 
ralism, 17. 

Offices of the Church, 63. 

Oriental religions, 238. 

Orr, James, The Christian 
View of God and the World, 
34, 51, 336 note, 395 note. 

Our great task to learn His 
creed, 200. 

Owen, John, 50. 

Pagan poets, 33. 

Pain, 24; gives argument to 

hope, 31. 
Paley, Dr., 10. 
Parables of Christ, 307. 
Pascal, 28, 36. 
Patience, rewarded in the life 

to come, 295. 
Patteson, Coleridge, 79. 
Peace on earth, 292. 
Pearson, C. H., The Causes of 

Pessimism, 409 note ; ]!ia- 

tional Life and Character, 

337 note. 
Personal equation of the age, 3. 
Personality the foundation of 

all sensation, 56. 
Personal responsibility, 208. 
Pessimism, 21. 
Peter, 100. 
Pharisees, The, taught fate, 

228. 
Philosophy, the value of, to 

Christian preacher, 49. 
Physiognomy of the age, 6. 
Plato, 73. 
Pliny the Younger, 86, 103. 



Poetry, despondent, 18. 

Pompey, 73. 

Pope's Essay on Man, quoted, 
252. 

Portraits of Christ, 129. 

Prayer, 235; of intercession, 
309. 

"Preach Christ," 169; what 
does it mean, 172. 

Preacher, The, who wishes to 
speak to this age must read 
many books, 6 ; how can he 
serve the present age, 43; 
first and greatest duty to 
preach Christ, 55. 

Preachers of Christ, the needs 
of, 239 ; to proclaim liberty 
in Christ, 242. 

Preaching with power, 53 ; the 
Gospel for an age of doubt, 
314. 

Predestination, 232. 

Prime, W.C., Along New Eng- 
land Roads, 420 note. 

Probation of men, 270. 

Problematische Natiiren, 17. 

Psychical research, 46. 

Psychological romances, 17; 
problem, 205. 

Psychology, testimony of mod- 
ern, 224. 

Purves, Rev. G. T., The In- 
carnation Biblically Con- 
sidered, 415 note. 

Questioning spirit of to-day, 8. 

Rationalism, thorough-going, 

48. 
Reading, value of general, 5. 
Redemption, 237. 



Index 



S'21 



Reform«ition, spirit of, 142. 
Religion of the Undergradu- 

ate, 326 note. 
Renan, 16, 29, 39. 
Resurrection of Christ, 98. 
Reubelt, Scripture Doctrine of 

the Person of Christ, 379 

note, 381 note, 384 note, 386 

note. 
Revelation, a new, 191. 
Robertson, Frederick, 79. 
Rod, M. Edouard, 34; Id^es 

Morales du Temps Present, 

403 note. 
Romanes, George John, 12 

7iote, 34, 114. 
Routh, Professor, 12. 
Ruskin, John, 258. 
Russian sceptics, 30. 
Rutherford, Samuel, 79. 

Saints, Anselm, 50; Athana- 
sius, 109 ; Augustine, 32, 
50, 111, 305, 312 ; Sermons 
on the New Testament 
Lessons, 392 note. 

Bernard, 79. 

Chrysostom, 53 ; the prayer 
of, 103, 133. 

Clement, First Epistle of, 
quoted, 107. 

Dominic, 312. 

Francis of Assisi, 53, 79, 
312. 

James, liturgy of, 102. 

John, 53; the kingdom in, 
178; Gospel of love, 181. 

Mark, liturgy of, 102. 

Patrick, 312. 

Peter, 53. 

Paul, 53, 78, 307; view of 



Christ, 146; Epistle of 
Christ's brotherhood, 148; 
on freedom, 240. 

Saints called to endure heavy 
trials, 274. 

Salmon, Dr., Introduction to 
the Xeio Testament, 62 note. 

Saul of Tarsus, 99. 

Savonarola, 53. 

Scepticism, causes of, 9; at- 
tributed to the growth of 
our conception of the phy- 
sical magnitude of the uni- 
verse, 11 ; in modern litera- 
ture, 24. 

Sceptic's account of the spread 
of Christianity, 83. 

Scherer, 16. 

Schopenhauer, 24. 

Science and religion, 9; not 
hostile to religion, 9; arro- 
gance of, falsely so-called, 
12 ; the boundaries of, 247. 

Scott, Sir Walter, 6. 

Scudder, Vida D., The Life of 
the Spirit in Modern Eng- 
lish Poets, 33. 

" Sea Dreams," by Tennyson, 
quoted, 20. 

Sermons, lay, 15. 

Sermon on the Mount, 93. 

Service, 283; the keynote of 
the kingdom, 308. 

Shairp, John Campbell, quota- 
tion, 202. 

Shakespeare, 73. 

Shedd, Dr. W. G. T., 50; Dog- 
matic Theology, 137. 

Shelley, quoted, 16, 25. 

Signs of reaction, 33; of the 
times, 3W. 



328 



Index 



Simplicity, The, that is in 
Christ, 196. 

Sin is the work of an enemy, 
267. 

Sinlessness of Christ, 74, 

Social regeneration, 300. 

Socrates, 73. 

Source, The, of Authority, 
167. 

Source, The, of authority in 
the kingdom of heaven, 169. 

Sovereignty, 247 ; the ques- 
tion of, 249; mechanical, 
260; embraces liberty, 271. 

Spielhagen, 17. 

Spirit, the questioning, 7. 

Stalker, Jsnnes, Imago Christi, 
195 note. 

Stendhal, Rouge et Noir, 29. 

Stephen, the martyr, 99. 

Stephen, Sir J. Fitzjames, Lib- 
erty, Equality, and Frater- 
nity, 55, 343 note. 

Stevens, George B., The Paul- 
ine Theology, 65 note, 100, 
352 note. 

Stokes, Sir George, 12. 

Strauss, David Friedrich, 32 
note. 

Stryker, M. W., Hamilton, 
Lincoln, and other ad- 
dresses, 438 note. 

Sully, James, 24 note ; Pessi- 
mism, 332 note. 

Sympathy with doubt, 22; of 
the age, 284. 

Synoptics, The, 178. 

Taine, 29. 

Tait, Professor, 12. 

Talbot's Analysis, 176. 



Tennyson, quoted, 19, 33; The 
Higher Pantheism, quoted, 
159. 

Theological fortification, 49; 
problem, 205. 

Theology, the future of, 51; 
current theology at fault, 
150 ; has lost sight of Christ's 
humanity, 126. 

Thomson, James, The City of 
Dreadful Night, 31. 

Thomson, Dr. W. \1., Material- 
ism and Modern Physiology 
of the Nervou^s System, 221. 

Thompson, Joseph P., The 
Theology of Christ from 
His own Words, 397 note. 

Three great problems, 205; 
great truths, 206. 

Todhunter, Professor, 12. 

Trask, Katrina, A Night and 
Morning in Jerusalem, quot- 
ed, 185. 

Trinity, 111 ; the doctrine of, 
108. 

Truth, a new power to reveal, 
93. 

Tyndall; Professor, 15, 208. 

Unbelief, respectful, 8. 
Universe, the magnitude of, 11. 
Unveiling, The, of the Father, 
83. 

Van Dyke, Henry, Poetry of 

Tennyson, 33. 
Virgin Mary, worship of, 140. 

Wagner, Charles, 13 note. 
"Ward, Mrs. Humphry, Robert 

Elsmere, 17, 30. 
Warner, Charles Dudley, 215 •, 



Index 



329 



Fatalism in Modern Fiction, 
408 tiote. 

Weiss, Bernhard, Lchrbuch 
der Bihlischen Theoloqie 
des Xcuen Testaments, 188, 
400 note. 

"Wesley, John, 53. 

Westcott, Bishop, IGl; The 
Incanutfion and Common 
Life, 301 ; The Gospel of 
Life, 347 note ; Commentary 
on the Epistle of St. John, 
387 note. 

Whittield, George, 53. 



Wilberforce, Archdeacon, The 
Doctrine of the Incarnation, 
VMS. 

"Wordsworth, 73 ; Ode to Duty, 
quoted, 242. 

Words of eternal life, 197. 

World, The, that is to come, 293. 

Young, John, The Christ of 
History, 349 note. 

Zeitgeist, 3. 

Zola, Emile, 17, 223; La Bete 
Humaine, 213. 



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can afford to miss reading this work. The work is carefully done with 
much labor and precision." — Booh Review. 

"The book is divided into three parts — theological, anthropological, 
and sociological. It is clearly written and does not fail in interest from 
cover to cover." — Louisville Commercial Journal. 

"This work is a most encouraging sign of the times." — Metaphysi- 
cal Magazine. 

" Expressing a great truth with novel force." — Christian Advocate. 

" A fresh and vital exposition — one hardly knows whether to admire 
more the sentiment or the expression. The author's gift of literary 
utterance, his fine feeling, and lofty purpose seem never to fail him." — 
Congregationalist. 



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